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ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 



BY 



ALBERT S. STEWART 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1911 






Copyright, 19 11 
Sherman, French & Company 



GI.A283384 



o 



TO 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
CONSERVATOR 



FOREWORD 

While this volume claims no guide-book office 
as to scenery nor scientific accuracy in allusion, 
the writer trusts that nothing found within will 
mislead the wandering foot nor offend the in- 
genuous. 

"Old West Point," indeed, has been trans- 
formed almost past recognition, the white walls 
of "The Church of St. Nicholas The Con- 
queror" have been frescoed, and the city that 
you saw yesterday you hardly know to-day; 
but heaven's radiance falls unfailingly on field 
and forest, mountain and stream, and the swift 
tides surge in the sunlight by North Brother's 
shore where a thousand souls perished when 
the "General Slocum" was burnt. ("A Morn- 
ing Ride" was written June 16th, 1904.) 

In some of the chapters, justification will be 
found for the dedication to the best known 
champion of conservation, and no "this fable 
teaches" may be necessary to indicate a casual 
moral here and there in other lines; but after 
all, you, gentle reader, perusing these pages 
with fondness for impressionistic flavor, may 
say, as did the little maid to him who gave to 
her the sagittate sorrel leaf, as she for the first 
time essayed its taste, "Isn't that sweet".? 

A. S. S. 

Newburgh-on-the-Hudson. 





CONTENTS 




Chapter 
I. 


St. Luke's Garden 


Page 
1 


II. 


An Afternoon in the Fields 


6 


III. 


A Mission Field in West Virgij 


flA 10 


IV. 


Huckleberries . 


15 


V. 


A Roundabout Ramble 


20 


VI. 


A Study in Green 


24 


VII. 


The Poplars of Horse Creek 


28 


VIII. 


Scenes Unsung . 


34> 


IX. 


The Top of the World 


. 37 


X. 


Branching Waters 


. 39 


XI. 


From Forest to Lake 


42 


XII. 


Notes of Passage 


45 


XIII. 


The Hudson 


48 


XIV. 


A Rural Road . 


54 


XV. 


Down East 


. 57 


XVI. 


A Ride to Denmark 


. 62 


XVII. 


The Land of Snow 


. 66 


XVIII. 


Orange and Sussex 


. 69 


XIX. 


A Hill Country 


. 75 


XX. 


Out the Erie 


. 78 


XXI. 


Going to Presbytery . 


81 


XXII. 


The Hudson Highlands 


85 



CONTENTS 



Chapter 




Page 


XXIII. 


From Passaic to Paterson . 


. 95 


XXIV. 


Memories of the Meadows . 


. 97 


XXV. 


Prohibition Park 


. 100 


XXVI. 


Lest We Forget 


. 103 


XXVII. 


The Church of St. Nicholas the 






Conqueror 


. 106 


XXVIII. 


A Morning Ride 


111 


XXIX. 


A Pauper Funeral 


114 


XXX. 


The Irish Shoemaker 


117 


XXXI. 


An Appreciation 


119 



ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 



ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

A tradesman, who had acquired a modest 
competence in the metropolis, sought a more 
leisurely life in a fair city on the Hudson. He 
built a fine house in a sightly location. He pre- 
pared a lawn and planted shrubbery; and 
then, as time hung heavy on his hands, he did 
some amateur gardening. It happened, how- 
ever, that the house, set well back in the lot to 
secure the fine view thus afforded, left no great 
space in the rear; so the good man brought 
forward his kitchen-garden planting on a strip 
at one side of the dwelling. 

Alas, for the simple-minded soul: his cab- 
bages grew great and bewrayed him. The 
passersby said in their hearts: 

"This new neighbor lacks sense of the fit- 
ting." Certain sojourners, attending an an- 
cient school in the city, scoffed at what seemed 
to them too sordid a motive; themselves but 
now absolved from like labors on the farms of 
the prairies. 

No doubt there is a place for everything, 
and roses may seem to have more right than 
radishes about a mansion's portals; while the 
duty of the gardener who serves wealth is 
rather to provide flowers than fruit. But 

1 



2 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

the king himself is served by the field, and it 
is of good omen that now, more and more, 
charitable and penal institutions devote a 
large share of* their domain to vegetable cul- 
ture. So it has come about that over against 
the home of the friend of whom this parable 
began to speak, is now St. Luke's Garden, 
where beets and beans, corn and cabbage, po- 
tatoes and onions, grow, in parallel files, 
straight and comely. This garden is an ex- 
ample of careful and skilful culture, and its 
healthy growth may well claim admiration 
from the passing citizen or divide the attrac- 
tions of the fine view spread out before the 
eyes of the patients who resort to the build- 
ing's balconies. 

St. Luke's, indeed, has a fair green lawn, 
sloping from its western portal, and the steep 
descent on the east bears full-grown maples 
and beech trees, with elms and basswoods 
mingled, while here and there is some tangle of 
shrubbery, whose untrained wildness is not un- 
grateful to the eye that looks lovingly on Na- 
ture's own license. 

But you have guessed already that "St. 
Luke's" is a hospital, and may ask yourself or 
me, what relation can be between a pharmaco- 
peia and a gardener's hand-book? 

Our parable may not be too much pressed 
to present an answer; but to prevent is better 



ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 8 

than to cure, and to nourish life than to mend 
the broken body with ever so skilful surgery. 
True, man does not live by bread alone; but 
in the plane on which we are now moving, with- 
out bread, in a very literal sense, he dies. The 
Great Physician Himself showed alike His 
kindness and His saneness when He directed 
that to the little maiden whom He had called 
back to life something to eat should be given. 

The relation, indeed, between the gardens 
of our grandmothers and the "materia medica" 
of druggists' shelves or hospital stores seems 
obvious enough, as these gardens furnished 
the herbs for old wives' decoctions. The pres- 
ent purpose, however, is not to present such 
parallel, but to show by the example of the 
garden where vegetables grow on the grounds 
of St. Luke's, that its medical management 
does not ignore the commonplace necessities of 
life, and that the exigencies of healing the sick 
do not forbid provision for the comfort of the 
convalescent. It is even suggested that the 
sight of this healthy life of the garden may be 
restful to wearied eyes and soothing to tired 
nerves. 

Here, then, is potent protest against the 
gibes of the thoughtless or the disdain of the 
high-minded. The disciples of plain living and 
high thinking may hold themselves superior to 
much concern for the garden's green growth 



4 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

or the golden grain of the harvest field. But 
let us trust that a day of saner sentiment has 
come, and wholesome, if homely, ideals in the 
transformation of noisesome vacant lots and 
reclamation of suburban wastes. To teach the 
artisan how to hide the hideousness of his own 
back-yard may be more to him than medicine. 
So St. Luke's garden may serve as an example 
of the growing appreciation of the worth and 
beauty of olericulture; — the name may not be 
familiar, the thing is as old as Eden, which 
our great-first-father was to "dress and keep." 

Happily, in standard books on our library 
shelves and in current issues of the periodical 
press, you may read at length of gardens 
ancient and modern. Many of these publica- 
tions no doubt give most space and illustration 
to floriculture or landscape gardening, but in 
them there is usually some note taken of the 
kitchen-garden of the amateur. One writer 
says, in lighter vein, "There is poetry in po- 
tatoes, and lots of sentiment in Brussels 
sprouts and carrots." Another says of ama- 
teur gardening: "It is increasing to the no 
small advantage of the community, the nation, 
and the world." 

In all this, the thought is not of base use or 
servile utility. It is rather of the healthful in- 
spiration of the gardener's occupation. As 
compared with agriculture, horticulture savors 



ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 5 

less of need or compulsion. The garden sup- 
plies not bare necessities, so much as articles 
of beauty and enjoyment. True, avocation 
may shade into vocation here: the diversion of 
the well-to-do may be the poor man's serious 
occupation, as he delves with daily diligence, 
earning his bread in the sweat of his face. 
But when the Angelus sounds, at morning, 
noon, or evening hour, the peasant leaning on 
the implement of his hard toil, lifts eye and 
heart to the bending heavens ; and for him as 
for no other, it may be, the still voice whis- 
pers: "To him that overcometh, to him will I 
give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the 
Paradise of God." Surely for the whole world 
round, the curse shall be turned into a bless- 
ing; and the word of assurance abides, whether 
in lower and literal sense or of higher, heav- 
enly, consummation: "He hath made her wil- 
derness like Eden, and her desert like the 
garden of Jehovah." 



n 

AN AFTERNOON IN THE FIELDS 

A half-dozen cedars stand in picturesque 
distribution in a fair field on the borders of the 
city. Except for a few suburban villas in the 
distance half hidden in the foliage, there is the 
seclusion of rural peacefulness. A little way 
northward stands a tenant's house, in outline 
and color conforming well with the general ap- 
pearance, and beside it the great Powellton- 
farm barn. 

All the horizon round is wooded, with clumps 
and groves, in the nearer or farther distance. 
Most graceful of all are the elms in the fore- 
ground, or where, at a short distance apart 
two fine springs flow, one from the foot of the 
swelling hills, the other from the base of the 
triangular plain. Over the last a single elm 
stands guard, in an almost motherly way 
spreading its green, graceful canopy over the 
fountain whose face seems like that of a child 
that looks out on a new world in timid yet fas- 
cinated wonder. Then, as if impelled by mys- 
terious forces, the limpid waters flow quietly 
through a field where the green grass grows 
rank while bordering hills were here white with 
daisies, there reddish brown with the sorrel's 



AFTERNOON IN THE FIELDS 7 

bloom — fair enough to the painter's eye, but 
hateful to the husbandman. 

The flocks and herds which so often appear 
in such a picture are wanting, though a bunch 
of horses are grazing near, and rural sounds 
are heard — bird-song and insects' hum. Here 
it might seem that one could commune alone 
with Nature or Nature's God. But in such 
seclusion, hidden here in this natural amphi- 
theater lies a baseball "diamond" on which a 
game was played on a Saturday in Summer 
between the nine of the Union Church and rep- 
resentatives of the First Presbyterian. 

As I sat at the foot of one of the cedars I 
wished for Old Homer's powers to paint the 
scene before me, for it was such a combination 
of Nature's loveliness and human movement 
as none but he could picture in words. He 
would call the roll of the eighteen players — 
this fair-haired catcher of giant bulk, a lawyer 
by profession, or this first-baseman, long and 
lithe — a clergyman he, whose blue-eyed elder 
in the left field catches a swift ball "on the 
fly." His, too, is the wary pitcher whose wily 
ways sometimes win victory where hateful de- 
feat impends. For livelihood he holds an ac- 
countant's pen. This other colossus whose bat 
sends the white ball far afield belongs to the 
craftsmen who are named from their work in 
lead. And this stocky man, who neither 



8 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

catches, pitches nor bats, with feet firmly 
planted and hands on knees, looking alertly 
over the field, surely Homer would paint him 
for his marked figure as well as for his import- 
ance in the game — the umpire, who deals in 
coal. He would tell with joy of this swift run- 
ner or of the short-stop's athletic pose, in what 
winged words you can imagine. 

So the mimic battle is waged on the arena- 
like plain. Innings follow innings like the 
change of scene in some old-time open-air the- 
atricals, and now and then a murmur rises for 
a favorite's defeat; or a shout of applause for 
a victory won, goes up from spectators perched 
on overlooking hill-tops or reclined along the 
grassy level. 

Breeze there was little or none behind the 
circling hills, but the long-continued, all-per- 
vading haze, far borne from Adirondack's 
forest fires, seemed to absorb most of the June 
day's heat, and effectually screened visitors 
and players from the sun hanging like a bra- 
zen ball in the smoky sky. Perhaps the strange 
effect of the scene was due in part to these at- 
mospheric conditions. 

Even more dream-like is another play close 
by, on the golf-links beyond the narrow by- 
way that divides the fields. Here, in 'the dis- 
tant quiet, white-robed maidens pass in twos 
and threes with caddies at proper distance. 



AFTERNOON IN THE FIELDS 9 

over the grassy swells, while now and then a 
man or two, belted and canvas-shod, paused in 
their own leisurely play to observe the contest 
on the plain at the foot of the cedar trees. 

So afternoon passes to evening, golfers go 
their ways, the "diamond" is deserted, and 
long before the darkness falls the fields are left 
to the creeping things and the bird in the ce- 
dars who sings his love song to his mate, while 
the fountain under the elm flows silently on 
through the twiHght in likeness of His mercy 
that fails not day nor night. 



Ill 

A MISSION FIELD IN WEST VIRGINIA 

The field lies on Ten Mile Creek, from its 
junction with Cabin Creek at Leewood to Kay- 
ford, where two mountain brooks unite to form 
this brawling branch, nearly five miles in 
length. Close and steep on either side, the hills 
rise a thousand feet. These were once heavily 
covered with hardwoods and a scattering of 
hemlock and scrub pine. The finest timber has 
found its way to the company's sawmill, but 
enough remains to furnish pit posts and give 
forest character to all the view except for a 
few garden patches along the base. Between 
the hills, highway and railroad and stream 
dispute possession of the straitened space. 
The glory of autumn foliage seems doubled by 
this close setting of the painted mountain wall 
over against its fellow, and the pencil only can 
present the picturesque effect of Acme's mile 
of red miners' cottages, between spring's hills 
of green, while leafless winter discloses the 
summit's rocky escarpment and castle-like 
crags. 

The Cabin Creek branch of the Chesapeake 
and Ohio railroad runs from the mouth of the 
creek at Coalburg to Kayford, sixteen miles, 
with a spur to Dacota from Leewood, about 

10 



WEST VIRGINIA MISSION FIELD 11 

five miles. On the forty miles of freight track- 
age, there are fifty mine openings. A dozen of 
these, operated by the Cabin Creek Consoli- 
dated Coal Company, lie in the field. They 
are in upward order the Cherokee, the Caledo- 
nia, the Red Warrior, the Buckeye, the Em- 
pire, the Keystone, the Acme, the Thistle, the 
Rose, the Shamrock, the Raccoon, the Cabin 
Creek. 

A new railroad has been hewn out along the 
face of the mountain from Caledonia, a mile 
below Acme, to reach coal and timber lands on 
the fork of Coal River in Raleigh County. The 
grade is very steep, with a tunnel at the sum- 
mit nearly a mile long. The railroad cuttings 
disclose geological features interesting even to 
the lay observer, and numerous coal seams be- 
tray the riches for which the miner delves in 
the darkness of the mountain's depths. Truly 
the treasures of Pluto are hidden in these high 
hills. 

Scarcely a score of years ago these glens so> 
near the capital itself (Acme is thirty miles, 
from Charleston) were in a state of almost 
primeval wildness. Only trails led betweeni 
the scattered cabins of these mountaineers,, 
whose mode of life was most primitive. But 
now two passenger trains daily make connec- 
tion with the main line (Chesapeake & Ohio) 
at Cabin Creek Junction, and the people take 



12 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

frequent trips to Charleston and other points, 
on business or pleasure. The little city of 
Charleston, like the young state, is beginning 
"to find itself" and impresses the visitor with 
its air of enterprise and wealth. Even on the 
"creeks" the company-stores make a brave 
show of up-to-date wares, including the green- 
grocer's line. Here lies temptation indeed for 
the always prodigal miner to spend all he 
makes for food and clothing. Happily on the 
field there are few saloons, though upon the 
border "The Black Cat" lures many a simple 
soul to waste his substance and debauch his 
manhood. 

The typical house at Acme is a cottage of 
four rooms and sometimes a shed kitchen at- 
tached. There are a few more commodious 
dwellings supplied with modern improvements 
and furnished with taste, while the luxuries of 
life are enjoyed in some managers' homes. 

Religious services are held in the school- 
house at Leewood and at Red Warrior and in 
a hall at Kayford. The Stevens Coal Com- 
pany built and maintains at Acme a respect- 
able church building and allows the use of a 
cottage to the minister, and one also for the 
two women "missionaries." The miner can 
hardly be called religious. Even here, where 
open temptations are not much in evidence, he 
is beguiled into drinking and gambling, and a 



WEST VIRGINIA MISSION FIELD 13 

mule-driver's oaths might shame a sailor. There 
are some, however, who truly fear the Lord. 
The mountaineer indeed is by nature religious, 
but his simple soul has too often been beguiled 
by the sophistries of some wandering "Elder," 
Mormon or otherwise. 

Before the strike of 1904-5 laborers were 
largely of native birth, but now Negro and 
ItaHan are employed along with Slav and 
Greek, and the Syrian merchant bids for trade. 

The "strike" also brought in machines to 
take the place of miners who left. Still, consid- 
erable "pick-work" is done. The men prefer 
this, and an average workman can earn from 
three to four dollars in a nine-hour day, the 
draw-back being idle days, sometimes self-im- 
posed. 

The work is not unhealthful, though hazard- 
ous enough. Fatalities are not infrequent, 
while minor injuries by falling slate or from 
contact with mules or mine cars are of common 
occurrence. 

Two seams of coal are worked. One of 
these lies high up in the mountain, the steep 
inclined plane of the Acme mine being eleven 
hundred and sixty feet long. This is locally 
known as "hard coal." It is furnished for fuel 
at Acme, and as it is comparatively clean, 
smoke and soot are less in evidence here than 
in most bituminous regions. Nevertheless, the 



14 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

workman who goes into the mine in the morn- 
ing with face of the fairest comes out sadly 
begrimed at the close of the day. 

The cleanliness next to godliness is often 
wanting in mining towns, though it is but just 
to say that in personal appearance the inhab- 
itants of Ten-Mile Branch of Cabin Creek are 
behind no other community, the children espe- 
cially being winsome. 



IV 

HUCKLEBERRIES 

He who gathers the luscious fruit must 
climb the steep hillside with toil and care. If 
he goes in the earliest morning, the dews of 
the night still clinging to the close set herbage 
will saturate all his garments. To avoid this, 
he may choose the western slope, where the 
early sun has partially dispelled the moisture, 
but those same rays will smite him hotly till 
he reaches the timber line (artificial), and es- 
caping the shining arrows he will but find the 
copse about him breathless, as, panting, he 
pushes his way upward. Still steeper is the 
face of the mountain. His footing is unstable 
on the shelving shale as he walks half blindly, 
seeking a way around the abrupt cliffs that rise 
before him. If for aid he grasps at the young 
growth up-springing about him, he may feel 
more disappointing than broken reed the 
treacherous help offered by the spiny green- 
brier or the honey-locust stinging with its 
thorns. 

Has he any reward when he reaches at last 
the summit? Yes, he may find delicious fruit, 
and as he patiently picks the tiny globules, he 
will doubtless recall that hymn's true word: 
"Little drops of water," etc. 

15 



16 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

And is this the reward of his labors — huck- 
leberries ? 

All the trees of the forest are here, the herbs 
that Solomon knew, and hundreds more be- 
sides. Animal life of higher forms is not 
abundant, but he may hear the scream of the 
hawk circling above him or the sweet note of 
some hidden warbler calling to its mate 
across the valley. He may even hear on occa- 
sion the rattlesnake's warning whir. He 
treads, it may be, a carpet softer than any 
from the looms of Brussels or Wilton, while 
outcropping ledge and weatherworn cliff give 
token of the earth's vast frame beneath him. 

But some one says : "Alas ! What is all 
this to me? I am but a classical! I profited 
above many mine equals in old Homer's story 
and Virgil's song; but I hardly know a beech 
from a birch tree, and my children ask in vain 
for the names of flower or shrub or bright- 
winged bird. Woe is me, that I did not choose 
the 'scientific' course. Had I done so, I would 
not gather 'huckleberries,' but the Vaccinium 
Pennsylvanicum ! Why did I barter scientific 
attainments for humanistic endowment .f^" 

With such like remorseful reflections, when 
the sun is high, the gatherer descends with con- 
stant care lest the beautiful blue-berries " be 
scattered as food for creeping things, as he 
stumbles, hot and breathless, downward. 



HUCKLEBERRIES 17 

Months later, when the face of the mountain 
is bare and the winter wind sweeps through 
the naked trees on the crest, as he sits at his 
evening meal, he remarks to the good-wife that 
by her homely process she has produced a very 
palatable huckleberry jam. 

Is this the meaning of it all? This purple 
pottage? What else? This, if he had learned 
to look on nature through the pagan poet's 
eyes, or listen to the rhythm of the mountain's 
heart-beats with an ear that classical measures 
had trained to hear true, there alone on the 
forest heights, he had gained without guile the 
birthright of the sons of God. 

No Pisgah view, indeed, is here, nor, let us 
be sure, are many mountain visions so wide as 
some have supposed. But standing on the nar- 
row summit, the eastward scene reaches to the 
bounding hills of Cabin Creek, over a broken 
land clothed with living green. A thousand 
feet below him lies Ten-Mile Creek, ever flow- 
ing from the springs of the mountain to the 
far-away sea. Facing round and looking over 
the mighty furrows plowed by primeval forces, 
where some woodman's ax has cleared away 
the mantling forest, the hills beyond Charles- 
ton, thirty miles away, rise into the silent blue. 
Here is a vision of eternal times. So once be- 
fore in Michigan's level land, where other ber- 
ries grow a few miles from its shore, when sud- 



18 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

denly Huron's calm blue expanse was revealed, 
it seemed that light and strength eternal, at 
once, were there, and he who saw went all his 
years as one who had looked on the face of 
God, alone. 

Haec fabula docet: "Art is long and time 
is fleeting," therefore, let us, for our limita- 
tions, choose well between appreciative power 
and labeled knowledge. The scientific course 
may give the last, but still there will be scien- 
tists and scientists ; and some of these, success- 
ful in material lines, are sorely tempted, in 
these days of practical progress, to barter the 
better fo;r the worse. Even Chancellor Mc- 
Cormick's well-chosen words and eloquent pe- 
riods touching Practical Education* may 
leave in your heretic heart a question how far 
applied science about Pittsburgh has wrought 
to "the glory of the great King over all," and 
how far to the fame of Carnegie and the for- 
tune of Westinghouse. Fortunes have failed 
in Pittsburgh, and men of great practical abil- 
ity have fallen low in the scale of righteousness 
there. Where fishers spread their nets was 
once a city, whose men were worldly-wise, of 
which God's prophet said: "By thy great 
wisdom and by thy traffic hast thou increased 
thy riches, and thy heart is lifted up because 
of thy riches ! therefore — " 

*See Presbyterian Banner, July 2, 1908. 



HUCKLEBERRIES 19 

The Chancellor's words, indeed, are weighty ; 
his plea for combination more than plausible, 
and pity it is that so few can answer the ques- 
tions of the Professor's children. (A small 
boy at the foot of the mountain, just now, 
said: "Mary, how do lightning bugs make 
lightning?" Who can tell him?) 

Let us not, then, love science less, but prize 
more the old humanities, and hold still the 
heritage of the simple sons of that earlier, no 
less real world, when the immortals walked 
among the children of men, whether the story 
be conned on classic scroll or in the pages of 
Holy Writ. 



A ROUNDABOUT RAMBLE 

The Coal River train was an hour late at 
Acme, because the trainmen had waited for the 
"pay car" at Leewood. When it arrived its 
one "combination" coach was mostly filled with 
a motley crew of Coal River boys well supplied 
with stimulants from Leewood's "Black Cat." 

It was a grateful relief indeed to turn from 
the scene within to note the outline of the vast 
hills and view the branching streams at Kay- 
ford, as the locomotive panted up the two miles 
to the summit in the long tunnel. Then, as 
the train went gliding down the steep grade, 
with Sang Creek tumbling clear along its rapid 
course below, the unspoiled beauty of the for- 
est-clad hills in the still bright hues of Autumn, 
was presented in ever varying aspect. Soon a 
sharp curve disclosed the clear green waters 
of Coal River washing the base of the cliffs in 
whose face the road is hewn. 

A few miles further is Jarrold's Valley, 
where Clear Fork and Marsh Fork unite to 
form the main stream. From this point the 
visiting minister went his way, on foot, to the 
home of John Jarrold on Little Marsh Fork. 
Here he found the log house with its wood fire 
brightly burning in the rough-built chimney- 

20 



A ROUNDABOUT RAMBLE 21 

place, and for three days and nights shared the 
hospitality of this "mountain" home. Shared 
is the right word; for on the Sabbath other 
guests are at the board ; by name, on the right 
hand Jacob, on the left Esau, in hunter-like 
garb, the other mild in manner and voice and in 
garments of the world's present fashion. To 
all the welcome was sincere, and the plain fare 
was dispensed with the royal grace of simple 
good will. 

With the night came the gray mists wrap- 
ping the mountains round while men slept, but 
in the morning these drifted from the face of 
cliif and forest, and the beauty of the new day 
beckoned to a walk up Clear Fork, six miles, 
to Lawson Home School. 

At first the way is hemmed close between the 
mountains, with only here and there an acre 
of arable soil by the bank of the stream, where 
stands some pioneer's cabin or "logger's" 
shack. The cliffs here are curiously honey- 
combed; and, though the glen is wild enough, 
the soft gray tone of these rocks, half clothed 
with lichen and fern, and quiet reaches of the 
river itself combine in an air of restful repose 
that might lure the city's careworn toiler to 
build his hermit's cell here. Where Rock 
House Creek comes in further on, the prospect 
opens a little, and here in the intervale stands 
an ancient house, its well sweep tottering to its 



22 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

fall, while up the gorge of the smaller stream 
may be seen a recently-built home of primitive 
pattern. Then the path leads past a construc- 
tion camp, untenanted now save by some squat- 
ter, whose children roam about with their dogs 
in a half wild fashion, and next comes an aban- 
doned modern cottage, built for the engineers 
who laid out the line of railroad up this fork. 

Four miles from Jarrold's Valley is Doro- 
thy, a new mining village partly built. The 
houses already occupied are of comfortable 
construction and tasteful appearance. The 
characteristic buildings, of course, are the com- 
pany store and office, "power-house," and 
"tipple." It would have been interesting to 
climb or be drawn up to the top of the incline, 
near three thousand feet, but the way still led 
to Lawson. 

The two miles between Dorothy and Law- 
son disclose still wider views. The intervale 
affords room for broad cornfields, whose ser- 
ried shocks gave promise of prosaic plenty, in 
contrast with the insistent beauty of the un- 
fruitful hills, which till now had usurped all 
attention. With the corn-fields came home- 
steads of comfortable construction and fa- 
miliar outline. This change in natural fea- 
tures, along with reports already borne to him, 
partly prepared the visitor to find the new 
brick boarding-school, set in a fair domain of 



A ROUNDABOUT RAMBLE 23 

lawn and garden and orchard, on a gentle slope 
between river and hill. 

Others, however, have written and will again 
write of the fine features of missionary work 
at Lawson; swifter pens will tell the tale of 
material development by Clear Fork's stream, 
and these reminiscences might have passed 
without record had not the quiet walk from 
Dorothy to Lawson stirred memories of an 
earlier day and a far land. Here the way be- 
gan to disclose features in the landscape, at 
once of home life and natural beauty, like those 
of that mountain country far to the north, 
where a laughing-eyed daughter was born, 
where "the hands of the presbytery" set apart 
the young minister to his work, and where, in 
his evening walk, he saw the hills of Stannard 
and Wheelock rising beyond the Lamoille's 
dark stream, forest-crowned, crystal-sown with 
frost-work ; and when the pencil of the sinking 
sun's beam smote them, lo ! all the colors of the 
palette, wondrous in silent, heavenly beauty, 
were painted on the mighty canvas. 

So, when life's sun sets, may pictures of 
"that better land" fall bright on the passing 
soul's vision, whether the last hour come at the 
foot of West Virginia hills or on the Green 
Mountains of Vermont. 



VI 

A STUDY IN GREEN 

The foreman was wont to point a moral, on 
occasion, by telling of the debate touching the 
painting of Uniontown's new fire-engine. A 
German-American made the final speech, say- 
ing with true Teutonic bluntness, "We paint 
him mit red and we stripe him mit red." So 
a simple "color scheme" may be justified if 
skill be given to paint the glory of the green 
hill that parts Sycamore's stream from Clear 
Fork Water. 

Looking from Lawson School, on a June 
morning, over the emerald meadow that lies 
between, it rises before the eye in graceful coni- 
cal outline, its depths of color shot through 
with living light. With its companion heights, 
it walls round the little valley with ramparts 
of forest foliage, at whose feet glide swift, 
bright streams, while through the school glebe 
flows a quiet brook, bordered with its alders 
and willows. 

From what loom ever came such wondrous 
arras, with its single color — so soft, so restful 
to the eye — hiding the rough-hewn mountain's 
frame, while the yearning of the Genius" of the 
woodland to join in old earth's tribute of 
praise to Him whose strength sets fast the 

24 



A STUDY IN GREEN 25 

mountains, breathes out through all, as though 
the green hills were sentient souls. The gran- 
deur of "cloud-capped summits" may be want- 
ing here — the awe of "dizzy heights" or 
"yawning chasms"; but if you are a soul sus- 
ceptible to nature's subtle power these green 
hills will hold your gaze with a quiet fascina- 
tion in the fresh forenoon, or if you have 
waked to look forth with the dawn, the moun- 
tains will stand like altars to the Highest as 
the mists of the morning rise like incense — 
sometimes, it may be, like the smoke of the 
holocaust — and when the sun has gone down 
the aroma of the wild grape's bloom and elder 
flowers, mingled with the spicy odors of the 
mountain herbage, will float on all the evening 
air like "the scent of the wine of Lebanon." 
Surely it is a land well watered like the garden 
of the Lord, and on it the dews fall as the dew 
of Hermon of Zion's hills, producing a verdure 
of indescribable effect. 

True, no ancient cedar like those on Syrian 
heights is nourished here, nor pine tree tall; 
but Bashan's oaks have rivals on these hills, 
and from the giant tulips, standing within the 
green veil before you, might be hewn a hun- 
dred hollow viking ships. All the "hard- 
woods," indeed, are here, and the dense shade 
of oak and birch and buckeye tree is dashed, 
at this season, with the chestnut's yellow-green 



26 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

inflorescence, while the sycamore's leaf of 
lighter hue, easily moving with every breeze, 
flecks the piebald trunks with light and shade. 
There are times, too, when the dark sheen of 
massed foliage is stirred by softly-moving up- 
ward currents and wave after wave of the olive 
tint of the leaf's under surface moves along the 
forest heights. 

So this master color dominates forest and 
field. It hides the gray cliif; it spreads a 
canopy of beauty over the face of the stream. 
But, while on mountain side and by the river's 
brink one hue appears, the eye is satisfied, and 
there is no sense of monotony, though 
Spring's bright flowers have passed and the 
golden glory of the Autumn has not blown. 

But here, as before on hills further north, 
the feller of the forest has come, and the 
mighty monarch of the mountain that had 
braved the storms of half a thousand winters 
is laid along under the ringing strokes of the 
woodman's ax or goes crashing down the steep 
hillside to crown the great log pile at Colcord 
siding. If you penetrate the veil of green and 
climb the steep, you will find the face of the 
mountain gashed and seamed by the great 
boles' downward plunge. The luxuriant 
growth of herbage and shrub may soon hide 
this havoc from alien sight as charity's mantle 
covers many sins ; but if fire breaks out in the 



A STUDY IN GREEN 27 

"slashing" when the green leaf has turned to 
brown, its hungry flame will leave all the land- 
scape scathed and naked. So it is well that 
from high place a note of warning has been 
sounded lest "the rivers be turned into a wil- 
derness and the water springs into a thirsty 
ground," for our sins of carelessness if for no 
others. 

True, the great band-saw that cuts like a 
knife through hearts of oak and maple and 
walnut sings a song of cities built and the 
equipment of great works. So for the present, 
he may be held a harmless sentimentalist who 
would stay the lumberman's hand from its 
heedless hewing; but when the earth has been 
robbed of its God-given garments of green, 
leaving the hillside bare and the springs for 
long months empty; when the lowland is 
wasted with flood or tormented by drought, 
then that cynical, careless statesmanship that 
has hitherto posed as the friend of "business 
interests" may begin to learn what the very 
first line of political economy should teach, 
that governments were instituted as trustees 
of that domain which God waters with rain 
and makes fruitful with sunlight, so that from 
generation to generation the children of men 
might know how blest His promise is: "I will 
be as the dew unto Israel; he shall blossom as 
the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon." 



VII 

THE POPLARS OF HORSE CREEK 

The tulip tree, high up, 
Opened, in airs of June, her multitude 
Of golden chalices to humming birds 
And silken- winged insects of the sky." 

— Bryant. 

Till the middle of last century houses in the 
Ohio Valley in the region beyond reach of 
Pennsylvania's pine were largely built of pop- 
lar lumber. The name, indeed, may be mis- 
leading because applied to trees of different 
species in various localities. A lover of trees 
has suggested that the first member of the bo- 
tanical name, Liriodendron (lily-tree) would 
be appropriate and beautiful; but, while less 
mellifluous, the specific designation, Tulipifera 
(tulip-bearing) would be more exact. In fact, 
we find the tree in our parks marked Tulip- 
Tree ; and this name may sometimes lead lovers 
of beauty to view with some appreciation its 
flowers, so seldom seen, even while their gentle 
fragance is meekly manifest. 

This tree is widely distributed in America, 
but in Europe is known only as an exotic. 
Alas ! like the stately pine, the poplar has^ been 
almost exterminated in our own land. No 
more do the boys of the village play about the 

28 



THE POPLARS OF HORSE CREEK 29 

great logs in the mill yard, carelessly conscious 
of these as the source of the spicy odors so de- 
lightfully diffused around them; and, in all 
the region where childhood's eyes gazed in 
wonder at the giant boles in the forest, this 
noble tree is now seldom seen. But because 
they have been less accessible, there are even 
now places where God's great gardens bear the 
trees of His planting, and the once familiar 
growth of northeastern Ohio, I found on the 
mountains of West Virginia. 

Just above the junction of the Sycamore 
and the Clear Fork, in Raleigh County, there 
is a great "band mill" ; and on the landing I 
saw again immense poplar logs ; and within 
the mill broad boards were shot in swift suc- 
cession over the rolls like plates of yellow gold, 
while through the constant quiver came throb- 
bing moans, as the great toothed band cut with 
a razor's keenness through the heart of the 
forest's fallen pride. 

Then there came a day in late summer when 
the "Missionary" made a trip on the "minis- 
ter's" horse from Lawson to Dry Creek. The 
view as far as Colcord "Y" was comparatively 
extensive and varied, though mountain 
bounded. On the right hand were meadows and 
maize fields ; on the left Clear Fork's softly 
rippling water, half hidden by copse-wood. 
The ascent was hardly perceptible. Then the 



30 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

hills began to crowd and the grade grew 
steeper. The Sycamore is here a large brook^ 
but a mile or more from Colcord there is a 
fork, and the right hand branch is of dimin- 
ished size, and the space between the hills still 
more contracted. This narrow space is occu- 
pied by a tramway, which crosses and recrosses 
the stream by rather rude and shaky bridges. 
To the head of this tramway, men and teams 
were "snaking" logs from the mountain sides, 
to be sent down for shipment on a spur of the 
Chesapeake & Ohio railway, which runs up the 
Sycamore. 

Here the real ascent of the mountain may 
be said to begin, and it was a pleasure at this 
point to fall in with another horseman bound 
for Dry Creek. For a time, though in single 
file, we rode close enough for conversation, and 
my companion pointed out where on the day 
before, a fellow lumberman had been crushed 
to death by a log which he had dislodged un- 
warily. It was not long, however, till poor 
"Pet," being undersized and overfed, gave 
token that the steep was taxing her strength 
beyond endurance, and to dismount was 
mercy's quiet dictate. For the time the more 
powerful animal of the other traveler had car- 
ried him out of sight; but when a curve in the 
path disclosed their progress it showed another 
"righteous" man who regarded the life of his 
beast enough to walk. 



THE POPLARS OF HORSE CREEK 31 

The direct distance from Lawson to the 
watershed between the branches of Big Coal 
River is only a few miles. Some of these miles 
we found of easy grade, and the route is on 
the line of a "county road" over which the 
mail is carried; but the road here is only a 
bridle-path, traced in zig-zags along the 
mountain's flanks, while the climb from our 
starting point is over two thousand feet. 
When I reached the summit, my new acquaint- 
ance had finally passed out of sight. The de- 
scent began at once. My own safety, if not re- 
gard for my horse's lack of strength, counseled 
me to continue on foot. The downward grade 
was very steep, and there was some question 
whether safety was promoted by walking in 
front of an animal liable any minute to stumble 
in the shelving stones and roll over me. I was 
now out of reach of recent lumbering opera- 
tions, and some miles from human habitations ; 
and, as there were divergent paths, all often 
indistinct, I became somewhat concerned about 
finding my way. The day, too, was declining, 
and I wished that I could make more rapid 
progress over the unknown miles before me; 
but I was soon to see what would revive inter- 
est in my immediate surroundings. 

Years before, woodsmen had culled the finest 
of the timber to make "gunnels" for flat boat 
building, — an industry that in former times 



S2 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

flourished on the Great Kanawha. So, though 
there was an air of forest seclusion remaining, 
there was no growth of proportions sufficient 
to claim attention; and scanning the forward 
way, I was pleased to note the appearance of 
more open ground and level footing. In fact, 
I was nearing the sought-for upper waters of 
Horse Creek. Thus it seemed that I might 
mount and hasten; and then, with my foot in 
the stirrup, my eyes were lifted to see towering 
beside me a hundred feet heavenward, a ma- 
jestic poplar, left like a landmark on this 
mountain path. Standing there in the dim- 
ness of the forest, this lone tree inspired a 
feeling akin to awe, while at the same time this 
unexpected vision was like meeting an old 
friend in a far land. 

There was little time, however, to indulge in 
sentiment, and I rode on, thinking on my re- 
turn, in the clearer light of the morning, to re- 
new acquaintance with the noble poplar. I had 
heard that the way was rather rugged and wild, 
but no one had spoken of this beautiful tree 
or others of its kind, — it may be that wood- 
land worship forbids loquacity, — so further 
surprise was in store for me. For, as I rode 
on, speculating as to when I should reach my 
destination and what welcome I might 'meet, 
the first sign that I was to get away from the 
forest was a "clearing" on the steep hillside to 



THE POPLARS OF HORSE CREEK 33 

the left. But the ax that had gleaned this 
mountain field had spared a half score poplars, 
and a little beyond the deserted buildings of 
this small farm was another place on the right 
of wider acres over which were scattered, it 
may be, two score of these noble trees. No 
doubt they had been kept with a view to future 
profit; but there they rose, clear and straight, 
like fluted pillars of the firmament that bent 
above them, whose outer rim the bounding 
mountains bore aloft. 

Familiar though I had been with the forest 
from childhood, the poplars of Horse Creek 
were a revelation to me ; and I went on my way 
with a feeling like to his to whom God has 
given to discover fair islands in some far sea. 
When I returned the next day, my friend, 
the care-taker of the Lawson Home School, 
met my enthusiasm for the giant "tulips" with 
his own for these great trees, while both fore- 
saw that when the railroad up Marsh Fork 
shall be finished the poplars of Horse Creek 
will feed the maw of some monster mill, ever 
crying, give, give. Then, too, the oaks of 
Peach Tree, standing like the oaks of Bashan, 
will yield their strength to the biting steel. 



VIII 

SCENES UNSUNG 

At first the road runs from the Kiskiminitas 
to the Tionesta, crossing Crooked Creek, and 
Cowanshannoc, the Pine Creeks, the Mahoning, 
the Redbank, the Clarion, crooked and swift 
as the Jordan. Then our way turns eastward 
from the dark flow of the Allegheny to where 
the wide, sweeping waters of the Susquehanna 
go softly down to the far sea by Havre de 
Grace. 

The journey is never by palace car, seldom 
by rail; often the rider walks, for the horse 
that draws is flesh and blood. So through 
winter's cold and summer's heat he goes past 
the fountains of oil and the wells of flame, the 
mines of coal and the banks of ore, through 
the oak woods and the forests of pine — on past 
fair homes and beautiful fields— by untidy 
dooryards and the barns of unthrift— down the 
wild gorges, up the long hills. 

Sometimes for many consecutive weeks he 
passes from place to place, and then for awhile 
he sits by his home fireside and ministers to 
the flock that he calls his own. 

Is the service hard.? He who has tried it 
knows. Are there no compensations in the 
very hour of toil.? He who turned in his jour- 

34 



SCENES UNSUNG 35 

ney where Atlantic waters part from those that 
go far south to the gulf, and looked out over 
the dark sea of the hemlocks with the blue 
mists of the mountains hanging above, saw 
such a picture as seemed to repay the weari- 
ness of years. 

But is this the work and reward of the mis- 
sionary? Nay! But that he may preach to 
the scattered flocks the Word of Life and see 
the good seed grow. So he is welcomed and en- 
tertained as God's messenger, and trusts that 
by such a ministry some are gathered into the 
kingdom of his Lord or recalled from back- 
sliding, not unmindful of that which is writ- 
ten, 'He who converteth a sinner from the 
error of his way shall save a soul from death, 
and shall hide a multitude of sins." 

But a hundred others labor in the same field, 
bearing different names indeed, but serving a 
common Master, preaching the same Gospel, 
administering the same sacraments, and it is 
no Judas heart that questions. To what pur- 
pose is this waste? The toil and time of many 
dissipated in gathering struggling congrega- 
tions to crowd each other in the same village 
or country side, where one might reap the 
field, and the others be free to answer the 
Macedonian cry from the regions beyond. 
However it may have been in other days, here 
is not the "scattering that increaseth." 



36 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

Very pleasant, indeed, it is to see the taste- 
ful churches of the Lutherans and Reformed 
standing side by side, where before was the 
"Union" Church occupied by both, as still the 
dead lie in the same inclosure. But as one 
graveyard suffices for the dead, so might one 
church accommodate the worshippers and one 
pastor feed the flock from Sabbath to Sabbath. 

True, there may be a generous rivalry be- 
tween people and people, and friendly stimulus 
of pastor by pastor — the days of strife are 
past — but, as parallel railroads increase the 
cost of travel and carriage, so competition in 
spiritual lines is not always followed by fruits 
unto eternal life. 

The facts indicated in the region considered 
are easily traced to the circumstances of early 
settlement and are recited in no despite to 
preachers or people, present or past, of this 
name or that; but it is to be feared that such 
like history is repeating itself, even now in 
sections of our land where there is less excuse 
for it and the problem of prevention is still 
unsolved. 



I 



IX 

THE TOP OF THE WORLD 

The roof rather it seems, with many a hip 
and curb though level above as of gravel or 
tin. The "Narrow Gauge" climbs to the 
heights by zig-zags and follows the ridge as a 
man walks the roof's crest, while the Erie leaps 
from hill to hill by the Kinzua Bridge three 
hundred feet from the bottom of the gorge, 
and before we reach Mt. Jewett the Rochester 
and Pittsburg comes into view from one hardly 
knows where. 

There are broad highways too through the 
lonely land, but in all the plateau few towns 
well built — the most but make-shift hamlets of 
lumberman or oil producer. The saw-mill in- 
deed has for the most part finished its work, 
and oil-rigs too are decayed, though some are 
renewed here and there. There is neither 
meadow nor marsh land, fertile field nor fair 
farm, neither spring nor stream, corn field or 
pasture land; but fire-swept, desolate stretches, 
or patches long ago cleared, now too poor to 
grow bramble. 

Much of it seems a land that no man cared 
for. But here was the home of the hemlock, 
and here even yet are the hardwoods — the 
beech and the birch and the basswood; the 

37 



38 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

maple-sugar, the cherry, and white ash, whose 
leaves strew the ground under the dull autumn 
sky for many a mile, while the fern leaf shows 
green here and there through the waste. 

Dreary enough is the picture, and the scene 
uninviting you say. But are there not possi- 
bilities in this "highland" worth the attention 
of the least sentimental? Its winter snows feed 
the rivers that nourish great cities and bear the 
fleets of commerce back and forth. Its sum- 
mer winds bring health again to lungs grown 
sickly in the city's stifling air, or to systems 
poisoned by the miasmata of fairer regions. 
Shall ax and saw never rest and the fire sweep 
on unchecked till all is as barren as much of it 
begins to be? And when lumberman and oil 
man and tanner have gone, and fierce floods 
drown your cities, and the summer's drought 
makes your commerce a mockery, then shall 
the generation to come charge us with wasting 
the heritage that was theirs as well as ours, 
and Spain that now spills the blood of the 
poor as once she felled the fair forests of her 
broad plateau shall say: "You have become as 
I am," while woodman's ignorance or miner's 
greed makes void alike a President's wise res- 
ervation of western forests or a great state's 
effort to keep open the fountains of ij:s own 
lordly Hudson. 



X 

BRANCHING WATERS 

He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which 
run among the hills. 
He watereth the hills from His chambers : the earth 
is satisfied with the fruit of Thy works." 

The hour was early. The clouds were dark 
above, and the heavens black with the smoke of 
half a dozen tall chimneys, while the heavy air 
echoed the slow cough of mighty engines pull- 
ing long trains of coal up the grade. AH the 
mountains round have been fire-swept once and 
again. Great rocks, half calcined and frost- 
riven, lie scattered on their sides as though 
cast there by the Jotuns in their giant play. 
And now comes the train for the west, to which 
passengers pass with pleasant thoughts of 
new-found friends at Johnsonburg. Even here 
the waters divide and the train takes the left 
hand way and moves with some speed to Wil- 
cox. Here the stream branches again and the 
view widens, showing the irregular but pleas- 
ing outlines of the village. Near at hand is 
the great tannery and beyond the church spires 
rising above the cottages. Still keeping the 
left hand way beside the slenderer stream the 
train climbs steadily, slowly, on in the fresh- 
ness of the May morning. Close by the track 

39 



40 BRANCHING WATERS 

the grass grows green, and the fresh young 
leaves of birch, and cherry and the scarlet 
bloom of the maple give promise of the coming 
summer, and the pendulous catkins of the al- 
ders wave in the wind. The pine forest, in- 
deed, has passed away for the most part, and 
even the remaining hardwoods are falling fast 
to feed the retorts of chemical works here and 
there by the roadside. Now leaving the last 
slender stream there is a climb to the broad 
plateau, where the air is pure and meadows 
green, two thousand feet above the sea. Leav- 
ing Kane on this highland, the train soon rolls 
down to Sheffield where the gleaming waters 
of the Tionesta meet us for a moment and 
then by easier upward grades Clarendon is 
reached, where old time wells of oil produce 
again. Then, while you note the marshes on 
either hand, the train has passed another 
water-shed, and now to your right rolls the 
Allegheny in its strength, and there, where 
the Connewango brings down the waters of 
high Chautauqua is Warren the elegant. In a 
few moments the train reaches Irvineton where 
roads diverge and bottom lands are wide. A 
little later where hills rise high is Tidioute the 
picturesque; while the stream rolls on, now in 
a narrow, deep channel, now bearing-' green 
islands on its broad bosom, sometimes with 
deep, swift current and then in quiet reaches 



BRANCHING WATERS 41 

reflecting mirror-like steep and rugged hills 
on this side, and on that — sloping plough or 
pasture land, all the picture framed by gray- 
brown mountains on whose now naked sides lie 
great rocks half clad with moss or lichen. 
Next comes Hickory with its gentle westward 
slope, while on the further side lie the dun hills 
deep cleft by the two streams that give an un- 
romantic name to a spot that for its beauty 
well deserves a place in song or story. The 
journey ends at Tionesta the fair, where for 
ages long the meeting stream has heaped the 
silt from the mountains to make the broad 
islands at its mouth. 



XI 
FROM FOREST TO LAKE 

Out of the hemlock forest — away from the 
beeches, the birches, the maples — away 
through the fields where once grew the pine 
trees — down the steep hill by the zig-zag — 
over the swift Allegheny our light train flies. 

Then we climb the wild gorge of Bear 
Creek, and speed over the Butler hills ; catch 
a glimpse of the Beaver below us, and now our 
way lies up the Mahoning, to memory dear, as 
fair to the sight. Then on to west and north- 
ward our train moves as a bird moves or a 
boat, through the level land, by orchard and 
garden and grainfield, gold in the sunlight, 
through the fat pastures where cattle are graz- 
ing, by meadows mown and fields of corn, past 
homes and schools, asylums and churches, till 
the spires of Cleveland, the fair "Forest City" 
rise to view. 

The walls were gay with bunting and the 
balconies bright with the garments of ladies 
fair, for it is the nation's birthday and the 
County of Cuyahoga dedicates to her soldiers 
and sailors who fell for the land they loved 
and the homes of their dear ones, its column 
of glory above the hall of memorial in dark 
Quincy granite. 

42 



FROM FOREST TO LAKE 43 

When the sun rose there was a sound of 
booming cannon, and all day long of strident 
fife and blaring trumpet, thundering drum and 
clashing cymbals, whose mighty music led a 
brave array of marching squadrons bearing 
sword and musket, battle-ax and bayonet, 
with helm and plume and mighty shako, 
horsemen and footmen and seamen marched the 
living walls between. Some were Highland 
clad, with bonnet and stocking and philibeg, 
and some wore the "old army blue," bearing 
battle flag and guidon stained with the tempest 
or torn by the breath of war's fierce blast. 

After these passed in endless procession, 
civic societies, merchants, mechanics, all repre- 
sented under heaven's high vault, while the 
breeze from the blue lake tempered the air at 
mid-day when the forty-four guns on the ar- 
mory grounds told of a nation still "many in 
one," and when the sun went down the naval 
salute answered back from the west-side. 

All this is but framing or background to 
"the dedicatory exercises" held on the square 
where thousands were gathered — soldiers^ 
civilians, plebeians, patricians, born in this 
land or others, yet all joining without distinc- 
tion to honor the day that made us a people 
and to consecrate the stately memorial of those 
who offered themselves to death on battlefield 
or in prison pen, on land or sea, that such her- 



44 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

itage as our fathers gave might pass without 
division to our children. Surely this picture 
has a more than local interest. "Soldiers' 
Monuments" indeed, fair and costly had risen 
over all the land, but this was unique in de- 
sign, a very volume of patriotism — not of the 
city or county or state, but of the broad Union 
for which the thousands gave their lives, and 
to preserve which true statesmen gave their 
noblest efforts, led by Lincoln, who sat as chief 
among them. It was fit that their names should 
find place on patriotism's memorial, "That 
lives of great men may remind us, we can make 
our lives sublime." Nor indeed were they for- 
gotten — that great army of women who gave 
themselves in every form of true and tender 
ministry in camp or hospital. Of all these 
may we not sing. 

On fame's eternal camping ground. 
Their silent tents are spread, 
While glory guards with solemn round 
The bivouac of the dead. ' ' 



XII 
NOTES OF PASSAGE 

The journey from Tionesta by the Alle- 
gheny to Newburgh on the Hudson brings to 
view in panoramic movement, forest and moun- 
tain and stream, in this spring-time of beauty 
in a way to delight the soul of him who has 
eyes to see. A part of the way, indeed, was 
passed in the darkness which fell as we left 
Warren, and full day did not come until we 
had reached Harrisburg; but as we moved up 
the Allegheny the sunlight fell bright on the 
face of the waters flowing like a living thing 
between the high hills of hemlock and oak and 
pine with the islands of green in the midst, 
and the moon shone clear on the flow of the 
broad Susquehanna, willow-fringed, and lone 
in the weird light of the midnight. 

We left Harrisburg in the freshness of the 
early morning, and as we swept on through the 
fertile fields of Lancaster County and the hill 
country of Chester we saw the smaller streams 
turbid with the red wash of the soil, while all 
the air was sweet with the perfume of locusts 
and the spice-like aroma of nameless shrubs 
on the hillsides. 

Then came Philadelphia's suburban homes 

45 



46 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

clustered here and there by the roadside, at 
which we paused not, but passed steadily on 
into the great station at Broad Street, and out 
again as the vast city seemed just fairly wak- 
ing, and with the single stop at Germantown 
Junction we sped up the beautiful Delaware 
to Trenton, then in a diagonal line across the 
level lands of New Jersey, sodden with the late 
fallen rains. And now on the right appear 
the wooden heights of Staten Island and then> 
beyond Newark, the great salt meadows of the 
Hackensack through which we moved as 
though we sailed a sea of green; and when we 
had pierced the basalt dike that with almost 
the sharpness of a knife edge separates the 
close-lying waters, over ninety miles from 
Philadelphia was run, and the ferry boat 
"Princeton" of the Pennsylvania Lines, bore 
us across the great North River to Desbrosses 
Street in the Borough of Manhattan. 

A walk down West Street, crowded with 
traffic, takes you to the Battery with its bath 
houses and boat landings, its green park and 
idle loungers and the old Castle Garden where 
so many a few years ago received their first 
welcome to American shores. Then you may 
climb to the station of the elevated railroad 
and ride to the banks of the Harlem with 
glimpses of the East River with its great 
bridges, its shipping, its islands with their hos- 
pitals, prisons, and houses of refuge. 



NOTES OF PASSAGE 4T 

The trip down town next morning is by the 
same Hne, looking into the second story front 
windows of the homes of thousands, middle- 
class or poor, for the rich love not the East- 
Side, though in rare places its low shores are 
as green as in the days of Peter Stuyvesant. 

This time the stop is at Fourteenth Street, 
and the walk west past Tammany Hall with its 
Indian Effigies and unsavory reputation. Hard 
by is Tony Pastor's theater and the old 
Academy of Music, and then comes Union 
Square with its patriotic monuments and tall 
business houses skirted on the west by Broad- 
way, the great artery of our western world's 
traffic and travel. Turn to the south and you 
may read for miles on either hand the names 
of merchants known all the land over. Even 
in this summer time at noon the sidewalks are 
filled with a moving stream of humanity. 
But you are tired of your walk and the roar 
hurts the ear that would rather listen to the 
wind in the hemlock woods by Clarion's 
Stream, and you are weary with gazing up- 
ward at the great office buildings as you count 
story on story almost without limit, so we will 
re-cross the Hudson (North River) to lodge 
in the quiet home, whose children remind you 
of those who play beside the far forest. 



XIII 
THE HUDSON 

FROM NEW YORK TO NEWBURGH 

At quarter past three, one midsummer day, 
"The Mary Powell" moved gracefully out from 
her berth and sped northward past the great 
steamships, which from day to day weave At- 
lantic's east and west shores together. All the 
river's broad bosom is cut with the barge's 
slow wake or swift yacht's track; or the great 
Iron Steamboats are seen bearing excursions 
to resorts of river or seaside, and other craft, 
steam driven or sail borne, nameless in num- 
ber and kind, appear. Thus while the boat's 
engines beat rhythmic time to the band's sweet 
music, we leave behind the great city with its 
joys and sorrows. 

Time fails and words to tell of the countless 
buildings of commerce, dwelling, or worship, 
of Grant's tomb in Riverside Park, or the 
homes for the helpless, reared in the name of 
sweet charity, and all the suburban shores, as 
we went onward past Spuyten Duyvel and Mt. 
Saint Vincent, Yonkers and Dobb's Ferry, Irv- 
ington and Tarrytown, Piermont and -Nyack, 
plowing now the broad bosom of Tappan Zee, 
with a glimpse of Sing Sing's gray prison cells 

48 



THE HUDSON 49 

in the distance, while the Ramapo Hills rise 
bold on the west. 

Here in Haverstraw bay the width is nearly 
five miles, and the eastern shore shows but 
dimly, unless a glass aids the eye. Then comes 
historic Stony Point with its light-house and 
fog-bell, and a little beyond on the east side 
Peekskill, at the southern gate of the High- 
lands. 

Now we are in the "Race" but half a mile 
wide as the boat passes lona Island, once fa- 
mous for vineyards and picnics, now a Gov- 
ernment Naval Stores station. 

But what can be said of Anthony's Nose, 
tunnel-pierced, of Dunderberg and Sugar 
Loaf, of Cro' Nest and Storm King, of Garri- 
son's the sleepy, and West Point, known to all 
men, though its plain and buildings are largely 
hidden from our view, of Constitution Island, 
the home of Miss Warner, and over against it 
the foundries at Cold Spring, where the great 
"Columbiads" were cast in our bitter war 
time. 

Thus rounding the point and island, we see, 
away across the shining miles of its own broad 
bay, Newburgh like a picture on some great 
master's canvas ; and, gliding swiftly to the 
"long dock," now note last of all the Mecca of 
many pilgrimages, the low stone house which 
was Washington's headquarters during the 
closing years of the Revolutionary War. 



60 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

FKOM NEWBURGH TO KINGSTON 

At the dock where the "Martin" is lying 
there is some hurry of heavy trucks and 
handling of freight, but promptly at seven- 
thirty the lines were cast off and the boat 
moves steadily up the great river. A glance 
backward shows the fast receding city rising in 
picturesque, terraced lines, while away to the 
south the broad water lies like a mountain-girt 
lake. Northward all the watery way seems 
empty except for the shad boats rocking on the 
waves, while again and again the long, sinuous 
line of their seines is crossed. 

Along either shore pass long freight, or swift 
passenger trains, bearing travellers from 
earth's end to earth's end; while by the river's 
brink, as long since by the Nile, toiling hun- 
dreds pile vast kilns of brick. 

At Chelsea the slope is easy to the eastward, 
presenting a fair view of field, farm and forest, 
while the western bank by Roseton is bright 
with locust bloom. Just above is Jova's, then 
Danskammer Rock with its light, and beyond. 
Cedar Cliff well named. A little further the 
rock rises sheer from the water and the "West 
Shore" has carved a path in its almost per- 
pendicular face. 

The first landing is New Hamburgh, tree 
embowered, just above the mouth of Wappin- 
ger's Creek. Almost opposite is Marlborough 



THE HUDSON 61 

on the west bank, and Milton Landing where 
the third stop is made, is on the same side a 
few miles above. 

Both these villages lie back on the hillside 
surrounded by vineyards and berry fields 
which are beginning to take on the hue of 
springtime, while the bursting buds of the 
hardwoods mingling with the darker green of 
cedar and hemlock produce a color effect as in- 
describable as inimitable. 

Here an abandoned lime-kiln looks like some 
ancient fortress, while present day prose is 
presented on the east side by the quarry of the 
'''Hudson River Stone Supply Co." like a great 
amphitheatre hewn in the hillside. Along the 
way, too, have appeared the mansions of 
wealth and culture, fair for situation on this 
side or that. 

And now on the left hand the hills rise in 
wooded wildness almost unbroken, in striking 
contrast to Poughkeepsie the city of homes, 
churches and schools, lying opposite. 

Here at a dizzy height crosses the long, 
long bridge, its structure so light that the 
great creeping train, as it crosses, seems sup- 
ported rather by magic than anything more 
substantial. 

The steamer goes steadily on beneath the 
spidery steel tracery of the bridge, leaving be- 
hind the quiet beauty of the city of schools, 



52 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

and on past the stately buildings of many a 
country seat of Vanderbilt or Astor merchant 
prince. 

There are a few rocky islands in the wide 
expanse and many a bold headland appears, 
with here and there a shallow cove where water 
lilies grow and fishes play. 

Orchards too were there, and fields of ripen- 
ing grain and vineyards clinging to rocky ter- 
races, and everywhere was seen the handiwork 
of Him who set the mountains fast and bade 
the river run from Adirondacks to the sea. 

Sailing vessels are seen on the way, from 
tiny canoe to four-masted schooner, passing 
sometimes swiftly, sometimes slowly, with white 
wings spread to catch the breeze. Now and then 
great tows of boats and barges are met — some- 
times as many as forty following the lead of 
from one to four tugs or tow boats. So lum- 
ber, coal, grain, and ice and other products 
pass down our watery way; while the brick or 
stone yards along almost its whole course send 
abroad barges deep laden with the materials 
that build the city at the river's mouth. 

Not all the landings made by the "Martin" 
have been noted, for sometimes her passengers 
wearied of the rumbling of trucks and rolling 
of beer barrels while they waited. Neverthe- 
less, thousands have made the excursion to 
Kingston Point by this line of boats, and 



THE HUDSON 53 

richly enjoyed the experience. The Day Line 
also lands at Kingston Point, where cars may 
be taken to Catskill Mountain resorts, or elec- 
tric cars to Kingston on the hill. A trip to 
this old colonial city will well repay the visitor. 
The tourist may have noted the breadth of 
the river and guessed at its depth, in places 
very great — his guide-book will tell him that 
from New York to Albany the difference of 
level is only five feet, and from his geography 
rather than from observation he may learn 
that it has no affluents of considerable volume 
from the Mohawk to the sea, so that it well 
deserves, in its natural characteristics alone, 
the name of the Lordly Hudson. 



XIV 

A RURAL ROAD 

The Isles of Quiet lie beyond the years. 
Hoar Prophets say it ; yet, for all the tears, 
I doubt the saying of the seers. 

I think that whoso seeks them here shall find. 
That all with open patient hearts and mind 
Shall drink their peace from sun and wind." 

The August sun was tempered by an air 
like October's, the road was in fine condition, 
and though a trolley car went whirling by oc- 
casionally, and though so near one of the 
world's greatest lines of travel by boat or rail, 
the old highway had an air of quiet that was 
good to the soul. While most are of the mod- 
ern way, an occasional house, stone built, low 
roofed, dormer windowed, brought a sense of 
the long ago, and the peace of past days 
seemed to linger in field and forest. 

The view was seldom wide, though just here 
you catch a glimpse of Milton clinging to the 
hillside across the Hudson and beyond it see 
the mountains. But to any son of the soil — 
'We are all of the dust — there is interest enough 
mear at hand in the scenes of rural life — of or- 
chard and meadow and farmstead — and the 
lover of nature finds joy as he rides under 
over-arching maples or through an avenue of 

54 



A RURAL ROAD 55 

elms, while he notes in the woodland familiar 
trees, and where the road crosses a wide ravine 
there comes the aroma of hemlocks and the 
scent of many a nameless herb, while further 
on the wild cherry drops its black fruit in the 
road dust. 

Except the herds of mild-eyed kine, whose 
product is basis of industry here, animate life 
is not much in evidence. But if you rest here 
a little when you have climbed the slope, you 
may hear the quail quietly calling her covey 
to cover in the brake by the roadside, and the 
woodchuck is watching when you pass on your 
noiseless way. 

In due time come Wappingers Falls where, 
beneath the great bridge of stone, the water 
goes dashing and foaming, torn and shredded 
by the rocks' rough ridges, for the "falls" are 
cascades rather, yet none the less beautiful, 
and sometimes in flood their rush is awful with 
the voice of great waters. 

The way now lies to the quiet village of 
Hughsonville. From here the road holds the 
heights between the Fishkill and the Hudson, 
and affords frequent views of the Highland* 
trending eastward in the blue distance, and all 
the broken landscape westward as far as the 
Shawangunk. 

The road is a thoroughfare, but not 
crowded with travel, and the farms are less fer- 



56 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

tile than those seen an hour ago. In nooks 
and corners, indeed, the bramble grows, and 
grape vines bind tree to tree by the roadside, 
while the golden rod begins to glow in the pas- 
tures and the old stone walls are kindly cov- 
ered by the clambering creepers whose green 
even now is splashed with the scarlet of aut- 
umn, while the scent of late harvest is "as the 
smell of a field which the Lord hath blest." 



XV 
DOWN EAST 

The Itinerary; Sixty miles down the Hud- 
son; a mile across Manhattan; fifteen on East 
River; a hundred on Long Island Sound; 
three score and a hundred on the Atlantic; 
thirty-seven miles by rail; these mark the 
stages in a journey from Newburgh-on-the- 
Hudson to Hiram by the Saco. 

The trip down the Hudson never loses its 
charm for the traveler, sitting close to the 
water, on the main deck of the "Mary Powell" 
as she speeds on in the fresh morning, past 
scenes of unrivalled natural beauty and points 
of great historic interest, while the soft strains 
of the orchestra float down to mingle with the 
swift swish of the cloven flood. 

At noon the boat made fast to the Day Line 
dock at Desbrosses Street. The walk across 
to the East River and about the water front 
was full of varied interest. 

With commendable punctuality, the stanch 
steamer "North Star" moved from her moor- 
ings and, after some maneuvering, turned her 
prow to its northward course on the East 
River. 

Though the hurricane deck was still damp 
from the recent rain, most of the passengers 

57 



58 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

found their way there to view the changing 
panorama presented on either shore, and the 
movements of all sorts of craft on the narrow 
estuary. It seemed to not a few passengers, 
as the boat swung round to course under the 
Brooklyn Bridge, that the tall smoke-stack or 
lofty masts must strike; but the bridge's eleva- 
tion gave ample way, while the same experi- 
ence was repeated as we swept beneath the 
Manhattan Bridge, the Williamsburgh Bridge, 
and finally cleared the Queensboro, longest of 
all. In the meantime, we had passed the Navy 
Yard on the right and the buildings of Bellevue 
Hospital on the left, and all the varied con- 
tour and broken horizon-lines of the boroughs 
on this shore and that; and then those new to 
the scene began to ask about the buildings on 
"The Island" (Blackwell's) ; Insane Asylum, 
City Hospital, Penitentiary, Almshouse, 
Workhouse, and the Metropolitan Hospital. 

But now our stout ship passes the old stone 
light-house at the Island's northern point and 
moves into the troubled waters of Hell Gate. 
Here we begin to leave the city and its islands, 
behind, and very soon we have passed the forts 
that guard the eastern gateway to the metropo- 
lis and enter Long Island Sound. 

This part of the course was passefl in a 
golden sunlight which made the vessel's broad 
wake gleam like a pathway of orient pearl, 



DOWN EAST 59 

till the gleaming disk, slow descending through 
barred and changing cloud effects, sank from 
sight beneath the purple waves. 

Many kinds of vessels, from tiniest launch to 
majestic steamer, and from sprit-sailed skiff 
to many masted schooner, appeared on the 
broad bosom of the sound, but now the water 
has grown so wide that even by day the 
distant shores fade from sight, and the witch- 
ing gleam of moon-lit waves was not proof 
against nature's call to sleep. 

When I waked and looked out of the open 
port as I lay in an upper berth, I saw in the 
early dawn only a wild waste of heaving water 
breaking into white-caps, and the darkling 
waves had a half-melancholy, half-menacing 
look as though I had been "alone on a wide, 
wide sea." Just then, however, we passed close 
to "Shovelful" Light-ship; and so it trans- 
pired that, combining this outgoing with my 
late incoming voyage, I was to see by day the 
whole course from New York to Portland, ex- 
cept the seventeen miles between Shovelful 
Light-ship, 218 miles from New York, and 
"Crossrip" Light-ship, 201 miles from that 
city, at which point I had begun to look about 
me on the inward passage. 

It was not long before we sighted Cape 
Cod Peninsula, running so close in as to give 
a fair view of its low, partly wooded or grass- 



60 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

grown shores, with breakers running along its 
white beach-sands. A village with its white 
church spire, and farm-houses here and there, 
had a homelike look to us sea-farers, and many 
a friendly light-house told of a nation's care 
for "those who go down to the sea in ships." 
And now we are abreast of the far-famed 
Highland Light, and the masts of the Marconi 
Wireless Station stand on the shore like the 
tall chimneys of some modern power-house. 
Though fewer vessels appear in this wider way 
than when we entered Long Island Sound, the 
evening before, we passed some lines of barges 
towed back light after discharging cargoes of 
Pennsylvania or West Virginia coal at New 
England ports ; and occasionally we had fine 
views of graceful, six-masted schooners, with all 
sails set, moving in silent majesty on the broad 
bosom of the deep. Surely "a life on the 
ocean wave" has a charm all its own. 

Again we lose sight of land, sailing the 
lonely, unfruitful sea, till, near 2 P. M., we ap- 
proach the light-ship "Cape Elizabeth" on the 
starboard — 13 1-2 miles from Portland and to 
port is the cape itself with its two lights ; and 
next, S 1-2 miles from destination, is rocky 
Portland Head with its surging surf and tall 
lighthouse standing where the first warning 
light on the Atlantic coast was lit, January 
10th, 1791. 



DOWN EAST 61 

First impressions may be lasting, but I 
should wish for more than even a second sail- 
ing to the broken shores of hundred-harbored 
Maine before essaying to describe the charm 
of island-dotted Casco Bay or the beauty of 
Portland, which rose before our eyes in pictur- 
esque loveliness as we rounded the break- 
water and moved over the placid bosom of the 
harbor to our moorings at Frankhn Wharf. 

At 5 :40 P. M. our train left Union Station. 
The rain had ceased, but the low hanging 
clouds and dull light gave a rather depressing 
appearance to the naturally pleasing scenery 
between Portland and Hiram, and through in- 
advertance I missed the sight of Hiram Falls 
from the train. Here, in a furlong's distance, 
the Saco goes plunging and seething down a 
descent of near a hundred feet between riven 
rocks of granite and basalt. I had seen this 
cataract, indeed, when in fuller flood it hurled 
madly on the thousands of logs which a dozen 
"drivers" watched with wary care, guiding 
with pike pole, or now and then breaking a 
jam with dynamite. 

But here is Hiram and the end of a journey 
of near four hundred miles of travel from the 
lordly Hudson to the brown, winding waters 
of Saco's mountain-born stream. 



XVI 
A RIDE TO DENMARK 

Not the low-lying land between the North> 
Sea and the Baltic, but a village of that name 
six miles from Hiram, Maine. Near by are 
towns and villages named Sweden, Norway, 
Poland, etc. Four counties in the southwest 
corner of the state bear names borrowed from 
the shires of Old England, while most of these 
divisions are called by the names which the 
Redman gave to mountain, lake, or streamo. 
Denmark is in Oxford County of which the 
county seat is Paris, the early home of Hanni- 
bal Hamlin. 

The time was a bright morning in the early 
fall, keen with the coolness that brought un- 
timely frost to blight gardens and cornfields 
when the next day dawned. For near three 
miles the road is bordered by woodland, and 
here there are no buildings, except one house 
long tenantless and a barn tottering to ruin. 
All saleable trees in this wood were felled years- 
ago, but now there is a dense growth of hard- 
wood and evergreen trees, in size, approaching 
the dignity of a forest. The breath of the 
fringing pines and rarer spruces and hemlocks 
combined with the forest herbage to produce 
an aroma gratefully exhilarating; and the 

62 



A RIDE TO DENMARK 6^ 

bloom of goldenrod and purple aster bright- 
ened the gray greenness of the foliage, while 
now and then a birch tree flitted by in its 
ghostly white. 

In this region the roads are often too sandy 
for comfortable bicycle travel, but the Den- 
mark road presented a fair surface, compara- 
tively level, and emerging from the forest, the 
wheel sped on past the pleasant homes of a 
thrifty people. Much of the land, indeed, is 
rocky, and the soil may not be fertile ; but even 
on the score of comfort, to say nothing of the 
grandeur of the mountains and the beauty of 
lake and stream, there are compensations here 
that might well discount the lure of the West. 
Surely the dullest denizen of Denmark must 
gain some uplift of soul as his eye sweeps over 
the wide panorama of forest and field on this 
side and that of the Saco, bounded by the 
White Mountain "Presidential Range," or as 
he gazes over the forest crowned hills toward 
the east among which lie many lovely lakes. 
The gliding wheel allows just a glimpse of 
some of these miniature seas on the right hand, 
a short distance from the village. 

Denmark, locally known as the "Corners,"* 
is even more picturesquely irregular than the 
average New England village, as it straggles 
down the hillside and beyond Moose Brook, 
while above the surface of the stream Pleasant 



64 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

Mountain rises more than a thousand feet. 
The road back from the bridge to the post 
office was too steep for riding, so there was 
opportunity to observe in passing pleasant 
homes and some dwellings of fair dimensions 
and appearance. 

Midway on the return, the "Bull Ring" road 
lures the wheel by various turns up and over 
"Tear Cap" hill. Tradition says that here 
long ago quarreling women tore each other's 
caps — hence the name. However this may be, 
this is a point of vantage to him for whom a 
wide and wonderful landscape has any charm; 
for, standing on this rocky summit, a thousand 
feet above the not distant sea, he may behold 
in every direction scenery of rare attractive- 
ness. Westward the course of the winding 
Saco may be traced for many a mile towards 
its springs in the mountains, while to the east- 
ward, a chain of beautiful lakes in the valley 
of Hancock Brook lie far down beneath his 
feet, and on the distant horizon is island-dotted 
Sebago Lake in which great ships might sail. 
This view embraces more than nature's un- 
tamed beauty; for though your feet rest on 
old earth's foundation of naked granite, some 
of Hiram's best farms lie on this high plateau 
or along the hill's northward and eastern 
slopes, while to the southward, six hundred feet 
below, are the twin villages of Hiram and East 



A RIDE TO DENMARK 65 

Hiram. There is a market garden within these 
limits, and fertile farms by the banks of the 
Saco. Mount Cutler rises a thousand feet 
above the stream, and to the rear horizon west- 
ward the cleft summit of Burnt Meadow 
Mountain with the long flanks of Hiram Hill 
between. 



XVII 

THE LAND OF SNOW 

Stainless as Truth, or Purity's white face, 
Behold the snow fall! Never came a dream 
On lighter pinions from the courts of Sleep." 

It is not a land where snow falls every day, 
nor in heavy masses many days, but where it 
is constant all the winter long. It is not a 
land of blizzards, though sometimes there are 
days together of driven snow, when eddying 
gusts pile it in mounds and ridges rapidly. It 
is true that the people speak of a "storm," but 
this means only a fall of snow. So some morn- 
ing, after days of bright sunshine, you rise, 
and, looking eastward through the blue-gray 
air, see a light cloud resting on the summit of 
the Stannard hills. In a few minutes, torn by 
the mountain, it drifts toward the valley, and 
when you look again all the view is filled with 
snow falling slowly through the silent air, as 
salt from an unshaken sieve. There is a gray 
pall over all the landscape — the world shut 
out in the persistent twilight, which gives way 
to darkness when the sun goes down, and re- 
mains when he rises again. But on the third 
morning, it may be, his beams shine bright over 
the untrodden, stainless snow lying on mount- 
ain and in valley; even the leafless forests 

66 



THE LAND OF SNOW 67 

clothed in white robes, and the clumps of 
pointed firs stand like fairy fabrics, or Chinese 
pagodas in grotesque groups, in the fields. 

Cold, is it? Sometimes the mercury falls 
far below the zero point, but the white fleece is 
warm as wool over all the land, the ground 
remains unfrozen and forest brooks go mur- 
muring on their way, free of prisoning ice, 
yet with hushed voices ; for though the increas- 
ing warmth of the sun may soften the snow on 
house-roofs, so that great icicles depend from 
low eaves to the ground, the housewife mourns 
her empty cistern, where no rain falls for 
months. 

In earlier winter, there is little hindrance 
to travel or labor; but toward spring the in- 
creasing depth of snow makes forest and field 
impassable except with snowshoes, and the trav- 
eled road becomes a "highway" indeed, ris- 
ing slowly from week to week, notwithstand- 
ing the passing rollers' ponderous weight or 
horses' beating feet. To miss the narrow road 
is likely to bring to driver and steed a snowy 
baptism. 

Toward spring, indeed, there may come such 
snow storms as are known in lower latitudes 
and lesser altitudes, when the feathery flakes 
fall fast through the murky air, and in a few 
hours' time block all the ways of travel; but 
these are not characteristic of the land of snow. 



68 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

Between the snow and the sunshine there 
may be days of silent blue, when morning 
mists veil the mountain's crest, rising slowly 
by-and-by to show its long line, forest crowned, 
crystal sown, a dream of beauty; and, when 
the sun goes down, the blue cloud curtain lifts 
for a moment, and his last glorious beams con- 
verge through the gates of the river's course 
through the western ridge, and paint on 
Wheelock's walls pictures, as though angels' 
wings had winnowed down the light of rain- 
bows there. 



XVIII 
ORANGE AND SUSSEX 

A wheelman left Newburgh as the late Sep- 
tember sun showed his bright face over the Bea- 
con Hills. He passed out Broadway to the 
city limits, and then turned to gain the old 
New Windson and Goshen road. Late labors 
on this line have made it fine for cycle or auto, 
but the west wind retarded in a way that only 
a wheelman knows. 

And now the gardens of Pochuck are passed ; 
the forest-clad bulk of Muchattoes Hill looms 
on the left, and on the right lies Washington 
Lake in the sunlight. 

Late rains have clothed pasture and meadow 
with a verdure unwonted at this season, but 
even now the creeper that climbs tree or wall 
is brilliant in scarlet, and the crimson-leafed 
sumach lends color to the copse here and there. 
All the hardwoods may be seen in the forests, 
and an occasional birch or tapering evergreen 
cedar by the roadside. 

Above the wood the crow caws to his mate, 
and meadow larks rise from the marshlands, 
while the scavenger-buzzard flings his dark 
shadow in wide, sweeping circles over valley 
and hillside. The saucy chatter of the red 
squirrel sounds from walnut or hickory, and 

69 



70 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

the little striped chipmunk, whose pouches, dis- 
tended with his winter store, give him a comi- 
cal look, peeps timidly forth from the wall. 

The view now widens, and the gently flow- 
ing waters of Silver Stream and Beaver Dam 
Creek lend added charm to the varied aspect 
of this rolling upland. There are pleasant 
homesteads by the way or gleaming fair on dis- 
tant heights. Not a few of these are solidly 
built, fourequare in the style of the fathers, 
whose characters were honest and strong like 
their masonry, which still appears in founda- 
tion and walls. 

But here is a hamlet with store, school, and 
church, in whose commodious manse dwells the 
ready scribe of the Presbytery — King, of Little 
Britain. Then gradually rising, the road 
reaches a crest at Beacon View Farm. The 
view. Indeed, sweeps far to the Catskills over 
Shanangunk's gray cliffs, and then by the left 
to the Highlands with Schunnemunk's rough 
ridge between. 

At Rock Tavern the Ontario & Western 
crosses the highway. For half a mile beyond, 
the wheelman walks, greeted now and then with 
a nod or bright word from the Italians, whose 
finished labors will leave a smooth surfaced 
road. Here in the grove by the brookside 
these sons of the South have built themselves 
booths or curious conical huts of sod. 



ORANGE AND SUSSEX 71 

At Burnside the winding Otter Kill is 
crossed, and again at Campbell Hall. A lit- 
tle further on, the way turns sharp to the 
south, and still the wheel speeds on by slope 
or level, till near its geographic centre, the 
county seat is reached at Goshen. Then still 
onward after the cranky pedal has been re- 
placed by a new one, and the tale would be 
long fully told, of the ever-changing scenes of 
rural beauty and nature's loveliness. Those 
who travel for business or pleasure are met or 
passed by, and the hideous "honk" and moving 
pillar of dust warn all of the automobile's 
swift flight. 

It is a relief to walk and catch the breath 
up the slope through the quiet village of Dun- 
ton ; and then, a few miles beyond, turning in 
swift flight from a glimpse of Middletown's 
spires, the way leads south-westward to Slate 
Hill with its ancient Baptist meeting-house, 
and Susquehanna Railroad. 

One short stage more and the wheel gains 
its first goal at Centreville. 

****** 

The wheel moved onward early on Monday. 
The road is too steep for wheeling for the 
first long mile, but the enforced walk was wel- 
come in the cool air, vital with the breath of 
the ripening forest's foliage and the scent of 
mountain herbage. For just here nature still 



72 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

asserts herself, and there is more of scenic 
worth, than profit to the husbandman ap- 
parent to the traveler's eye on either hand. 
He, often turning in his leisurely ascent, looks 
over a widening panorama of field and forest, 
mountain and valley, as he marks the winding 
way of the Rutledge through the town of 
Wawayanda. 

Though quiet now reigns in the village 
street, this road, leading from Port Jervis-on- 
the-Delaware to points on the Hudson, was 
once a highway of traffic, and Centreville and 
other places along the route were busy and 
prosperous. Even yet the road is by no means 
grass-grown, and surely, except as noted, 
there is no fairer farming country found than 
on this vast slope, arable to the crest, whose 
disintegrating rocks still add to the fertility 
of pasture-land or corn field. 

But the score of miles to be covered before 
the sun grows hot call the wheel to movement, 
and the southwestward way is held past the 
homes of thrift across the ridges and through 
the straths that stretch between. One of these 
is watered by Bondinot's stream, and here are 
alluvial deposits where once the pine tree grew. 

Two names appear on maps, but the wheel- 
man was aware of nothing like village or ham- 
let till he arrived at Greenville with its grace- 
ful white church. In his swift flight, indeed. 



ORANGE AND SUSSEX 75 

he had caught a glimpse on his right of an- 
other place to which men are gathered close, 
where the gleam of clustered marbles marked 
a city of the dead. 

A mile beyond Greenville, and as far from the 
summit, the wheel turns due south on "the 
mountain road." This road holds its way mile 
after mile along the mountain's flank. 

Indian trail it doubtless was at the first, and 
like many another, sometimes avoided the more 
level path which the glacier's mighty share has 
here plowed straight with almost imperceptible 
grades as though to mock the engineer's slow 
toil. So the rider moving over the smooth sur- 
face, swift or slow, saw near at hand by the 
way the happy homes of taste and comfort, 
and on the left, to the bordering mountains in 
the far east, a land as goodly as that which 
Moses saw from Pisgah's top. 

Somewhere here, the line is passed that sepa- 
rates state from state, but not only do natural 
features remain the same, and the grazing 
herds, and the cornfields' goodly shocks, but 
the men who greet you in passing or who 
gather the fruits of garden or orchard on 
either hand, are like those of the first day's 
travel, America's yeomen, true and free. Here 
caste has not come, and though their toil, in 
part may be homely as that of our first-father, 
no "brother to the ox" is here, nor "union" 



74 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

bondman of an imperium in imperio which, 
even as other such like things, seems evil — 
"necessary" only for lack of the just heart or 
clear vision among the "promoters'* of the 
world's work, and for failure of our states- 
men here to follow the better way. 



XIX 

A HILL COUNTRY 



(( 



But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a 
land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the 
rain of heaven." 

In the good old days the Cochecton turnpike 
made connections between Newburgh on the 
Hudson and Honesdale on the Lackawaxen. 
The distance is one hundred and fifty miles. 

From Newburgh the road runs across 
Orange County in a nearly straight line west. 

There are no millionaires' mansions out the 
pike, nor is the scenery remarkable for this 
part of the country, but for some reason the 
journey recalled certain scenes and homes in 
Pennsylvania. The fact that the road leads 
to the Keystone State and passes through an 
ancient Scotch-Irish settlement may have awak- 
ened the thought. 

It may be hard to point out any decided re- 
semblance, for stone walls are the rule here,, 
and many old houses are of the same material 
laid in strong white mortar holding the unhewn 
stones firmly in place. 

The county historian describes the surface 
as "rolling upland," but while there is no lack 
of drainage, the road is bordered at points by 
stretches where the soil seems damp and sour 

75 



76 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

and sometimes so full of angular stones of con- 
siderable size as to make tillage out of the 
question. 

The timber remaining in this section is more 
picturesque than profitable, and just now stub- 
ble fields are rank with rag-weed, while mead- 
ows are snow white with the wild carrot and 
pastures aglow with goldenrod. Let no one 
sneeze, or take hay fever on reading this line. 

Many of the buildings are old, though new 
roofs with projecting eaves and gables on some 
of them relieve the primness of outline; while 
as to others, shrubbery or climbing vine re- 
deems from the prevailing plainness of struc- 
ture. 

To the north are the Catskills, to the west 
Shawangunk's well defined range running par- 
allel with the Walkill, to the south the clus- 
tered or scattered ranges and summits of the 
Highlands, and to the east beyond the Hud- 
son, the Beacon Hills. Within this mountain- 
ringed horizon lie cities, villages and hamlets, 
fields, forests and streams whose beauty is yet 
to be sung. 

History says that the section was largely 
settled near two hundred years ago, by Scotch- 
Irish, and though changes have come and 
though many sleep in the graveyard beside the 
meeting-house, here are still a faithful few who 
hold to the way of the fathers in worship ; and 



A HILL COUNTRY 77 

there is something in the air of the place which 
reveals of what manner of spirit were the men 
who felled the forest and who laid the walls and 
built the houses whose foundations are firm as 
the faith of the builders. 

But as here and there more beautiful and 
more comfortable homes appear, built by the 
sons of such sires, so have some in measure 
modified the worship which they oifer as sin- 
cerely and, let us believe, as acceptably to that 
covenant-keeping God whose almighty hand 
set solid on their vast foundations the eternal 
hills, bathed in the beauty of the evening sun- 
light. 



XX 

OUT THE ERIE 

The train leaving Newburgh was crowded 
and very hot. Its movement up the steep 
grade brought only partial relief, while it 
passed out of the yard and above the West 
Shore tracks, leaving the terraced city on one 
hand and the great river with its ever fascin- 
ating view on the other, and moved on up the 
gorge of the Quassaic even now with its wild 
beauty unsuspected by the thousands who dwell 
so near. Then there is a turn to the left by 
the foot of Snake Hill with its bold, rocky 
face on whose western slope the army of Wash- 
ington lay encamped many months. 

Rounding its base, the mountain valley of 
the Moodna comes into view. Here, too, other 
points of historic interest as well as of pictur- 
esque beauty may be seen. Far away, beyond 
towering Storm King, is West Point, and here 
and there still standing the "Headquarters" 
occupied by the Revolutionary leaders, while 
some may remember the story of the Stacey 
family, in the old McGuffey's reader. The 
tragedy occurred on the banks of this beautiful 
stream, which thus became known as "Mur- 
derer's Creek," but N. P. Willis it was, who, 
disliking such gruesome suggestion, rechris- 

78 



OUT THE ERIE 79 

tened the flowing water, Moodna, though in its 
upper course it still bears its ancient name of 

Otter Kill. 

Beyond VaiPs Gate the land is more level, 
with well-cultivated farms, though some fields 
are stony enough, and there are stretches of 
sour marsh land. Still further on, the road 
itself has been cut through rough ridges of the 
natural rock, everywhere in view with its ver- 
tical strata. So passing village and hamlet 
and farm in nineteen miles, the connection with 
the main line at Greycourt is reached. 

It is Saturday, and the train from New York 
is vastly long, crowded with husbands and 
brothers and sons coming from the city to 
spend their Sabbath with their families who 
make all this region a resort for the summer. 
Soon after leaving Greycourt, the course 
crosses one of the great marshes now drained, 
and planted, acre on acre, in onions, and then 
comes Goshen, the county seat of Orange 
County. From here to Middletown the way 
runs through a pleasant country of well-kept 
farms and tasteful homes. Just below the city 
stand the beautiful buildings of a state asylum 
in the midst of park-like grounds. 

Four miles further is Howells on the hill, 
where the road turns to the south to find its 
way through the broken land to Port Jervis 
on the Delaware, seventeen miles away. 



80 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

Howells Depot stands on a rocky ridge 
crowned by the white meeting house, with its 
square tower, which can be seen for many miles. 
Standing in front of this building the view 
swept over a land of green fields and forests 
of second growth, framed by blue mountains, 
the nearer slopes of which he like a map traced 
with the lines of farm walls with varied contour 
of grove or water course. Here with the dusk 
comes welcome rest. 



XXI 

GOING TO PRESBYTERY 

A teachers' meeting had been held in the 
study of a minister in Western Pennsylvania, 
whose daughter was one of the band. He was 
an aged man, and by the young people held in 
some awe for his seemingly austere character. 

The Superintendent, too, was advanced in 
years, — an elder of the Puritanic cast. All 
were the more surprised, therefore, when, in 
the social half -hour following the study of the 
lesson, these ancient men began to tell stories 
of "Going to Presbytery." 

The mode of travel was by private convey- 
ance, which gave fuller opportunity for seeing 
the country than the whirling train ; but at the 
same time there was some tendency to tedium 
on the long country roads. It seems, however, 
that our reverend father and grave elder had, 
in their day, known how to secure a little vari- 
ety by speeding horses, sometimes to the point 
of "racing by" each other, leaving the losers to 
digest defeat in a cloud of Butler County dust. 
Even aside from such incidents of travel, 
"going to presbytery" was in those days an 
event in the lives of country pastors and elders 
who, except for these meetings and maybe an 

81 



S2 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

annual outing at the county fair, dwelt in the 
isolation of country homes. 

But times have changed, especially in the 
Presbytery of North River, which occupies a 
narrow strip lying on both banks of the Hud- 
son from Kingston on the north to Highland 
Falls on the south, almost every church being 
^conveniently reached by boat or rail. 

The train left the West Shore station. New- 
burgh, in the late afternoon when all the ter- 
raced eastern front of the city lay in the 
shadow, but across the broad river the level 
sunbeams burnished the windows of Fishkill- 
on-the Hudson as with gleaming gold, while the 
changing violet hues clothed all the background 
of the mountains. Just then the wide bay was 
scarcely vexed by prow or paddle-wheel, 
though here and there a light boat moved with 
a white sail, like a bird's wing in the breeze, 
and the great transport "Hart" plowed her 
way through the shimmering water bearing to 
the further shore a whole train of loaded 
freight cars to supply fuel and food to New 
England's busy cities. 

Then the train rolled down through ancient 
New Windsor, with its brickyards and Italian 
inhabitants, on past Plum Point and over 
the Moodna, beyond which is Cornwall, once 
famous for writers. Then under the sheer 
lieights of Storm King, and, with swift flight 



GOING TO PRESBYTERY 83 

past Cro' Nest, the train plunges into the tun- 
nel near a mile long that pierces West Point, 
and a mile below, the journey was all but ended 
at Highland Falls Station. 

Here there was about us a view famous the 
world over — mountain and stream and forest 
combined in a picture whose memory abides as 
a dream of beauty. Here in the heart of the 
hills the river's expanse seemed like a lake 
hemmed in by the mountains, and when the 
"day boat" "Albany," came round West Point 
and quickly glided out of sight between the 
ramparts that rise beyond Fort Montgomery 
it seemed as though the mountain wall had 
opened to let her come and go, and her thou- 
sands of tourists, and those that watched 
seemed like men of a phantom world. 

Space will not permit to tell of the towering 
cliffs, creeper covered, with purple flowers m 
clefts and crannies, of vine and fern and palm- 
like sumac, nor of the forest's growth of locust 
and cedar and linwood with oaks and chestnuts 
everywhere hiding the stark frame of the 
mountain — a single detail is all that may be 
noted. A guy wire had been stretched taut 
from a telegraph pole to a tree whose gnarled 
roots held firmly to the moss-covered rocks. A 
vine springing there had climbed the tree to 
the wire on which it had run out half a hundred 
feet, and hung its purple clusters fair to the 



84 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

eye, but so inaccessible that like the fox of old 
the modern small boy will tell you of "sour 
grapes." 

Is my story even so to you, 0, Son of the 
western land, dreaming of such scenes amid 
the rustling corn in the glad October sunshine.'^ 
Look about you! For your quiet farm-house 
home lies perchance in regions scarcely less 
romantic, if less sung, than those here pictured, 
and where your life may be no less brave and 
true than here. By Conemaugh's mountain 
flood or in Loyalhanna's sequestered glens you 
may hear the heart of nature beat, and muse 
of all His mighty works who "watereth the 
mountains from His chambers." 



XXII 
THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS 

OLD WEST POINT 

From Canterbury the way up Idlewild Creek 
is of easy grade at first, but when you cross 
the iron bridge and take the new West Point 
road, most of the time it is easier to walk than 
to ride, as the road leads you further and fur- 
ther into the solitude. 

Your slow travel, however, and the solitude, 
too, are favorable to observation of nature as 
you mark the forest-clothed mountains about 
you. There is indeed no dark forest, nor ever 
were, perhaps, on this rocky mountain soil 
"The dim aisles" of the giant woodland; but 
there is a fair growth of cedar and hemlock, 
birch and butternut, oaks of many a leaf, 
climbing vines and herbs of the mountain, 
nameless to you, but all known to Him who 
said : "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb 
yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit 
after his kind." Yes, apple trees are found 
here and there by the way, remnants of or- 
chards ; and traces of settlement are seen even 
on these heights. 

The road on the further side is steeper than 
the ascent. There are no "beetling cliffs" nor 

85 



86 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

"yawning chasms," but the great tree-clad 
slopes seemed to lead down interminably into 
the blue abyss, while the mountain brooks made 
half-mournful music falling from height to 
height, in the weird enchantment of the Indian 
Summer. 

But here a cannon planted to the trunnions 
by the roadside marks the boundary of the 
reservation, and then at the lone cross-roads 
in the forest you turn to the left, and "coast" 
for miles down a broad, smooth slope to the 
northwest corner of "the plain." 

The crumbling walls of old Fort Putnam 
may still be descried high on the mountain, 
though almost hidden by clustering cedars, 
while the view from its grass-grown ramparts 
is one of the loveliest in the world, of moun- 
tain and stream, and the Post spread like a 
map four hundred feet below. The site of Fort 
Clinton (at first Fort Arnold) may be found 
at the northeast angle of the Plain with Kosci- 
usco's monument hard by, and on Trophy 
Point may be seen portions of the great chain 
which was stretched from Gee's Point to Con- 
stitution Island to prevent the passage of Brit- 
ish ships. In the Ordnance Museum, too, are 
Revolutionary relics and interesting collections 
of arms and equipments dating to the most 
modern, and many novel things gathered in all 
our conflicts, including Cuban, Chinese and 



THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS 87 

Philippine curios. In the Library, CuUom 
Memorial Hall, and Academy buildings are 
many military mementos, and some things 
suggesting our years of peaceful achievement, 
while the hospitals, the gymnasium, well ap- 
pointed, with its great swimming pool, and the 
new Officers' Mess, might claim hours of atten- 
tion. 

Beyond and about the charmed circle of 
cadet life and officers' quarters, like a coarser 
husk, is another West Point not so well known 
to visitors, seldom thought of by the great 
public who, from sea to sea and from the Lakes 
to the Gulf, feel something like personal pride 
and interest in the Academy. 

Thousands of visitors indeed come for but 
a few hours, between up boat and down, or 
gather about the plain to watch a foot-ball con- 
test or drill of cadets, fair to see, and carry 
away this charming picture alone in their 
minds. Few except those having friends or 
business on "The Post" ever penetrate to 
Rugertown, the home of enlisted men and their 
families, with hospital, school and gardens, and 
the casual visitor may hardly note that there 
are distinctly two castes within army lines, 
while civilians are received either as "distin- 
guished guests," or tolerated as purveyors of 
necessities from which neither officer nor sol- 
dier is exempt. 



88 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

There is something, indeed, of a mediaeval 
cast and air of seclusion and separation from 
that world which moves past so close in swift 
steamer or by rail beneath the Point itself in 
the great tunnel. The castellated Cadet Bar- 
racks and the Elizabethan architecture of the 
Library (built of native granite in 1841) lend 
to the illusion, and the impressible visitor must 
feel the atmosphere of a class conservatism fos- 
tered by military traditions. 

With it all there is a strange fascination 
which grows by acquaintance, and, lover of 
peace though you are, and democrat by in- 
stinct, you condone the pride of position which 
transforms the raw country boy and transfers 
him to a place in the exclusive caste which 
seems sufficient unto itself. Over all, indeed, 
officer or soldier, cadet or civilian, floats on its 
tall white staff the flag of our common country, 
and though the tinge of seclusion may be felt, 
here in the heart of the Highlands, natives of 
every State feel themselves at home beneath 
the banner's bright folds and enjoy a pride of 
their own in the place. 

It may be further said that all these, from 
Colonel to scullion, are human as others, 
knowing the joys and sorrows, trials and tri- 
umphs, common to men and, however exclusive 
their kind, all will treat the stranger kindly, 
whether nameless or distinguished. 



THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS 89 

HIGHLAND FALLS 

The village of Highland Falls lies on a 
plateau of irregular shape and surface two 
hundred feet above the Hudson. The popula- 
tion is near three thousand; there are four 
churches, a large public school and a library, 
yet the tourist may pass by boat or rail and 
hardly suspect the existence of such a place. 
The road from the station of the West Shore 
Railroad is wildly romantic, bordered by a 
footpath that saves distance by climbing stair- 
like the rocky terraces. The brook that tum- 
bles from above is caught half way down in a 
reservoir of dark masonry, and the clear 
waters catching the light through the tree-tops 
relieve pleasantly the sombre gray of the scene. 

To the left are the grounds of Ladycliffe 
Academy. Here was once the well-known 
Cozzen's Hotel, where not a few famous guests 
were entertained in past days. The great 
building crowns the cliff and is seen from afar. 
The property is now in the hands of the Sis- 
ters of St. Francis who conduct a school after 
their manner here. 

The Rev. E. P. Roe was pastor of the Pres- 
byterian Church of Highland Falls when he 
began to write the books that gave him at the 
time such fame as the author of "What Would 
Jesus Do.'*" has lately attained. During his 



90 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

pastorate, and with money largely raised by 
him, the substantial granite building was 
erected, as a tablet in the vestibule bears wit- 
ness. 

The squad of cadets who attend the morn- 
ing service, though but a score in number, rep- 
resent localities as far apart as New York and 
Montana, Michigan and Texas. The only 
other opportunity that cadets have of visiting 
the village is when they are permitted, a few 
at a time, to make a circuit of the mountain 
roads on horseback, but without dismounting. 
Many of them, however, gain their first ac- 
quaintance with Highland Falls as "candi- 
dates." There are three schools here devoted 
to preparing aspirants for entrance to the 
Military Academy, and most of the civilian 
employes of the Post and a few of the married 
soldiers live at Highland Falls. 

These close relations with the Academy and 
Post and its physical surroundings give this 
village a character of its own which it is easier 
to feel than to describe. 

It is a community for the most part of toil- 
ers dependent largely on West Point and to 
some extent, too, on the families of wealth who 
have summer homes close by. There is little 
surface for tillage near at hand and no outly- 
ing tributary agricultural district. So here as 
at West Point the people dwell alone on their 



THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS 91 

narrow, broken table-land between mountain 
and river. 

Over the mountain a "Coaching party" may 
come; up and down the river thousands of 
tourists pass by boat or rail, and travelers 
whose itinerary compasses the round world are 
borne swiftly under the cliff by thundering 
trains, while the people of our village, like 
other Highland dwellers, live on their peaceful, 
independent lives. 

Here, as at West Point, there is an old world 
savor. No castles, indeed, are here, nor ruins 
gray; but the monk and the soldier are here, 
and the "Sisters" walk in their ample grounds 
in seclusion, as of a world apart from the tur- 
moil of traffic, toil, or travel. The village is of 
irregular outline and varied architecture. 
Narrow, winding streets climb here and there 
in such picturesque fashion as is more com- 
mon in lands beyond the sea; and here, where 
a few pioneers of the sturdy Puritan kind 
gained scant subsistence from the rocky soil 
or held these mountain ways at the price of 
life in the days of British aggression, are now 
the crowded homes of thousands from far for- 
eign shores. 

FORT MONTGOMERY 

A local historian writes that the drive from 
West Point and Highland Falls to Fort Mont- 



92 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

gomery is the finest in the country. True, the 
road seems almost lonely, as there are few 
houses on the road itself, and the view for much 
of the way is limited to immediate surround- 
ings as you pass in silence on ; but even so, you 
seem to come nearer to Nature's heart and to 
hold communion with the Genius of the mount- 
ains gray. 

We are told, indeed, of elegant villa resi- 
dences near at hand, but they are out of sight; 
and when you look for them you may think of 
the prophet's words, though you may not pro- 
nounce a prophet's woe on those "that lay field 
to field till there be no place, that they may be 
placed alone in the midst of the earth." Best 
known of those who thus dwell apart is J. Pier- 
pont Morgan, whose "field," indeed, is largely 
forest, and his place of half a thousand acres 
is well named "Cragston." 

His summer home, though thus secluded like 
others of its kind from vulgar contact, may 
yet be seen by the tourist on the river who 
knows where to look, soon after the steamer 
passes north of lona Island. He may also see, 
just below Conn's Hook, the long, slender, pier 
from which the king of finance boards his 
yacht, the dark Corsair. 

Further on, you pass an occasional Cottage 
and a few farm dwellings of pleasant appear- 
ance. There seems to have been more cultiva- 



THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS 9S 

tion formerly than now, and probably there 
were more inhabitants of native lineage. For 
as you ride through the group of children play- 
ing in front of the American school-house you 
note the dark complexions that tell of Italian 
parentage if not of foreign birth. In the ham- 
let, too, on the banks of Negro Creek, you will 
find citizens of African descent living in 
shanties hastily built, the men being tempo- 
rarily employed, with other laborers, in the 
changes which the West Shore is making in 
its line. 

Climbing the steep hill beyond, bordered 
close by dark hemlocks, you find a lonely road 
with not a few turns and often steep, till your 
southward way ends on the graceful iron bridge 
that spans Poplopen's Creek where it tumbles 
below the great Roe Dam. The dashing waves 
beneath make fit music for such a scene, while 
the sky of the morning frames a picture of 
such solemn majesty of the gray mountain that 
you wonder not that Moses sought to see the 
face of God in Sinai's solitude. 

Other sights and scenes, indeed, have here 
been known, when the two forts at the mouth 
of the creek were taken by the British in 1777, 
and the name of Bloody Pond for years re- 
minded him who wandered in this wilderness 
how the bodies of dead and wounded men were 
flung into its crystal wave, which henceforth 
seemed incarnadine with patriot blood. 



94 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

More pleasant thoughts are suggested by the 
old mill which recalls the days when the pio- 
neers cleared the forest and planted these hill- 
sides, which are now overgrown again almost 
as in the "time primeval." 

The present Fort Montgomery is a strag- 
gling hamlet at the meeting of some mountain 
roads. It is half a mile from the Hudson, in 
semi-seclusion, and like other places in these 
hills, combines both the old and the new. 

But the morning passes, and the home in 
the city fair is miles away. So you turn your 
wheel northward, while some musician, unseen 
in one of the ancient cottages, wafts you on 
your way with the strains of "Auld Lang 
Syne." 



I 



XXIII 
FROM PASSAIC TO PATERSON 

The road runs through the township of Clif- 
ton. This is a territory of remarkable beauty, 
filled with handsome homes, in wide, well-kept 
grounds, most winning to the lover of rural life 
and scenery. The swift trains of the Erie, fol- 
lowing one another in rapid succession, move in 
the midst this way and that, while the Lacka- 
wanna and Susquehanna bound either border, 
and a trolley line connects these thriving cities, 
where thousands of busy toilers produce the 
finest of fabrics for feminine wardrobes, and 
the foundries furnish machines of the world's 
commerce and arts. 

But the morning ride soon leads to the mar- 
gin of the river, mountain born, and tortuous 
enough in its hundred-mile course to the sea, 
the Passaic, peaceful here and placid as a lake, 
it seems to hide its beauty coyly between em- 
bowered banks, and the darkly silent waters 
calmly mirror waving branch and overcast sky. 
All the world of toil and traffic seems far 
away, though now and then an automobile 
glides swiftly over the smooth road, and a long 
line of wagons, loaded with carboys from some 
acid works, comes, like a caravan out of the 

95 



96 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

mystic desert, to move in solemn dignity be- 
side the stream. 

On the left hand the land inclines in a gentle 
ascent to a ridge running parallel to the river, 
on whose slope lie green pastures, fertile gar- 
dens, and a field of rye, waving like a sea of 
green; and then comes a beautiful miniature 
lake with its boats and boat-houses, and on 
the right is a shallow lagoon where the leathery 
leaves of the water lily lie on the sluggish sur- 
face; and all the air is perfumed with the wild 
vine's spicy odor and the scent of the black- 
berry's bloom mingled with the locust's fine 
fragrance above, and like a dream of that gar- 
den which our first-father kept were walnuts 
and willows and blossoming buckeyes, while 
one ancient pine tree rose high over all. 

It seems fitting to find, a little further on, a 
cemetery, Paterson's beautiful necropolis, 
where, in its costly mausoleum the dust of Vice- 
President Hobart lies, and where loving hands 
had garnished the graves, where sleep Passaic 
County's soldier dead, who followed the flag 
which marks each mound, and, as you turn 
back from the bustling city's border, you forget 
Paterson's evil name of anarchist-assassin's 
haunts, though men will not soon forget how 
this stream, so peaceful to your eye to-da-y, has 
rushed like a torrent of doom through the city's 
heart. 



XXIV 
MEMORIES OF THE MEADOWS 

Six weeks of commuting from New York 
to Passaic wrought the impressions of the 
Hackensack Meadows here set down. 

The trip by night had a solemn sort of fas- 
cination. To walk from the heart of the great 
city, to cross the ferry from gleaming shore to 
gleaming shore, where a thousand lights of 
green or red or white flash over the harbor's 
dancing waves, and ride out of the Erie's busy 
terminal, over the maze of tracks that converge 
at the tunnel, and emerging, to move through 
the silence of the marshes, in a darkness lit 
only by a dull lamp in a fisher's cabin here or 
there, wrought a transformation scene indeed. 

Even more unique was often the experience of 
a morning ride, when, leaving Rutherford, the 
train moved into the great sea of gray mist, 
and seemed cut off from all the world, as they 
who sail the fog-wrapped waters by New- 
foundland's shores. 

Still the memory will rather hold visions of 
the days of sunlit meadows, lying in wide ex- 
panse on either hand, where the rushes grow 
and sedges tall — the broad, unpeopled plain 
where a million pink flowers gleam through the 
green, and the purple trumpet of the morning- 

97 



98 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

glory decks the rank growth nourished by the 
dark ooze of the salt lagoons. 

At times a sail appears, flung out like some 
great albatross wing on the wide surface of 
the sea of green, the hull that it slowly moves 
hidden between the banks of the Hackensack 
River or Berry Creek. 

The road lies level as a floor, straight as a 
line, for four miles, and the swift train seems 
to pass in a moment, from the beauty of the 
meadows, into the yawning mouth of the black 
tunnel. 

If, in the swift flight, commuters care to look 
up from the morning paper, or light literature 
with which the girls of office or shop beguile 
the monotony of daily journeys, the shores 
that bound this lake of green may be seen ris- 
ing to east and west. The passenger will see 
on his left the steep ridge known as Jersey City 
Heights, with a school building, monastery, or 
water-tower as landmarks. In the dim distance, 
southwest, lies the fair city of Newark, while 
the tall chimneys of power-plants rise like 
monuments of modern methods, all round the 
circle. Or, if warning semaphore stay the 
train for right of way at the tunnel, you may 
note a tree-grown islet, in the grassy sea, in 
the foreground on the right, and beyond it 
Snake Hill, rising like some castle-crowned 
rock by the banks of the Rhine. Alas for the 



MEMORIES OF THE MEADOWS 99 

bright beauty of buildings, picturesque in out- 
line against the rocks' sombre tone or the oaks' 
dark foliage! Pauper homes are these, and 
penal institutions, near as odious to mention 
as the name the Hill bears. 

When the meadows are reclaimed and the 
new order comes, a beauty better in the eyes of 
some will appear, but your memory may still 
be of the flower-strewn plain, where the salt 
tides surge up through river and creek. 



XXV 

PROHIBITION PARK 

On the hottest day of the season, a friend in 
Jersey City said, "Let us go down to Prohibi- 
tion Park." So we went by street car on Ocean 
Avenue. Leaving the city behind we rolled 
down its long, straight line past the gardens of 
Peter Henderson, pioneer seedsman, on past 
suburban residences, churches, schools, and 
saloons to the car stables, where we exchanged 
horses for mules, slow-paced and sad, it seemed 
to us, as they plodded wearily along the wide, 
drowsy way where doubtless the winter wind 
holds high carnival, coming fiercely up from 
New York Bay on one hand or Newark Bay on 
the other. But for us no zephyr stirred the 
leaves or blew aside the red dust of the road. 

From Bergen Point the ferry-boat "Astoria" 
carried us over the narrow Kill von KuU 
through which the swift tide was bearing before 
the wind the white-winged boats. Landing at 
Port Richmond on the Staten Island shore, we 
find the new electric cars ready to convey us 
rapidly to our destination. Here are numerous 
tasteful cottages newly built or in course of 
erection, and a respectable hotel for boarders 
or transient guests at reasonable rates. But 
best of all to country eyes was the sight of the 

100 



PROHIBITION PARK 101 

beautiful grove, and sweetest to lips that 
loathed the water of plumbers' pipes was a 
draught from the great spring, like the fount- 
ain of life, "free to all." 

For three days the Auditorium had been held 
by the Salvation Army. Passing down the 
noiseless aisles, we found a not large company 
engaged in an "Experience Meeting." A Sal- 
vation sister presided, supported on the right 
by sisters and on the left by brothers. On 
both hands these were "Captains" it seemed. 
The features, most of the women, were foreign, 
and the speech betrayed a birth beyond the 
wave ; though one comely matron, who stood to 
testify with her white-robed infant in arms, ex- 
pressing her gladness, said, "I love Staten 
Island, for I was brought up here, but I was 
*born again' in Jersey." Others of the Army 
were seated in pairs and groups among the 
audience. These for the most part gave no 
sign, except when they joined in the ringing 
songs sung to the accompaniment of a piano so 
faint that at first it was difficult to locate the 
instrument. 

Who can tell the charm of such assemblies.? 
For charm there is. What psychology explains 
the magic of the rhythmic movement of such 
songs ? After the "experiences" the leader read 
the Lord's lesson of prayer, Luke 11 : 1-13, 
with running comment; and when they had 



102 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

sung again, as they still stood, the leader led 
in a quiet player, and then with uplifted hands, 
she closed in a form-like benediction, but still 
only petition. So all went forth, seemingly 
edified. 

After another drink from the spring and a 
parting look over the grounds and the country 
southward, we took our way from the well- 
wooded island by the rapid transit railroad, 
and soon the great steamer "Middletown" was 
bearing us through a scene of which penman 
and poet and painter might well despair, as 
from a rift in the cloud-vail the setting sun sent 
a gleam of burning red to gild the windows of 
vessels that glided here and there on river and 
bay; and then came the softly-changing shades 
to rest like the peace of God on the populous 
shores. 



XXVI 

LEST WE FORGET 

Readers country born may recall the plain 
meeting-house where families filed into the 
pew, leaving the end seat to the head of the 
house. He on occasion might rise in his place 
and beckon the stranger to a seat beside him 
or point him to some other, while unattached 
attendants might drop into a rear seat or 
mount to the gallery. And as they came thus 
in, so they sat long days through, family by 
family and aisle by aisle, passing but a whis- 
pered word within the solemn precincts, with 
seldom a smile of recognition as they mused 
upon the message of the man of God. He too 
came and went like his flock, it may be with 
grave salutation to an elder as he entered, and 
sometimes, even on other than sacramental oc- 
casions, members of sessions were requested to 
meet him after the benediction. 

It is related indeed that one acting pastor 
drove long miles from his home, entered the pul- 
pit, delivered his message, and went his way, 
with no other word to living soul, like the 
prophet who anointed Jehu. (II Kings 9: 
1-10.) 

Times have changed, however, and a wide- 
awake usher may be the pastor's best help. 

103 



104 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

Even in small churches, the modest young 
stranger who presently finds himself wedged 
into the pew of a large family, or that he has 
pre-empted the seat of some old saint who holds 
it as the very palladium of her heavenly hope, 
may wish himself well out of it. 

A recent item in the press tells of a young 
man who, yielding to the prayer of his country 
mother and persuasion of friends, entered a 
church in the city and because the usher was 
tactless, he went forth to visit haunts where the 
welcome seemed more sincere than in the House 
of God. The discrepancy between profession 
and performance is what offends the ingenuous. 
Churches and Young People's Christian Or- 
ganizations too often seem like mutual admira- 
tion societies — charmed circles not for the 
uninitiated. 

True, the church is not, after all, an open 
common where passing strollers may find di- 
version. So the invitations in church bulletins 
mostly mean that strangers coming to the city 
and desiring a permanent place of worship 
may find it where the sign is displayed. To 
quote: "Strangers and all others who have no 
church home are invited to make this home." 
Another bulletin: "The church cordially wel- 
comes to its services strangers in the cij:y, and 
any persons not identified with other congre- 
gations, inviting them to unite in its worship 



LEST WE FORGET 105 

and work." Now if the ushers will meet at the 
entrance persons casually visiting the church, 
and seat them without obvious distinction of 
worse or better, (James 2: 1-4) the right- 
hearted will ask little more than a sincere "come 
again" by printed or spoken word at the close. 
There remains the more delicate task of 
greeting and speeding the transients — many in 
every great city, or the still more difficult duty 
of welcoming and winning the drifting prodigal. 
For the first a sanctified imagination will 
greatly help, and memory of the Master's 
word: "I was a stranger and ye took me in." 
For the second let all lay to heart His admoni- 
tion, "See that ye despise not one of these lit- 
tle ones." Churches that write themselves 
"nearest to hotels" should make earnest effort 
to find the transient and greet him with no 
feigned words of fellowship : and if the wan- 
derer's footsteps turn to the house of God, let 
loving hearts welcome and willing hands help 
him, lest the Samaritan put Priest and Levite 
to shame. "He that is wise winneth souls." 



XXVII 

THE CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS THE 
CONQUEROR 

On Ninety-seventh Street, New York, be- 
tween Fifth Avenue and Madison, stands a 
square brick building surmounted by a cen- 
tral dome. This is unmistakably Russian in 
form. Four smaller domes in the same style 
are about it, each like the central dome bear- 
ing aloft a Byzantine cross. Replace the 
crosses with stars and you might suppose the 
edifice to be a well-built synagogue. 

As you approach, a man opens a case beside 
the portal, displaying for sale books, doubtless 
of devotion, in characters strange to you. An- 
other who in gait and dress resembles a native 
of our own Western plains, enters with you, 
but betrays his origin as he stoops to kiss the 
picture in the vestibule. 

Within the white walls rise to the dome with- 
out ornament except the pilasters, crowned with 
capitals in acanthus patterns, and conventional 
Cupids above. There are a few windows in 
colored glass in the walls, and in the central 
dome, but no emblems, except the figure of a 
dove in the window above the chancel. .There 
are no "Stations of the Cross" in relief as in 
Roman Catholic churches, nor realistic cru- 

106 



CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS 107 

cifixes on the walls, as the Greek Church dis- 
allows such images. Nor is there any "dim re- 
ligious light," nor "organ's peal through nave 
and transept ;" but a choir of men, directed by 
a robed leader, chant with a volume and beauty 
of tone that holds the listener rapt, though but 
the single word "Alleluia" seems intelligible. 

Candles, however, are even more in evidence 
than in Latin Churches. Eight massive cande- 
labra in burnished brass are ranged on the 
north side of the room. In each there is a cen- 
tral candle, two inches in diameter rising so 
high that the attendant seems to have trouble in 
extinguishing and re-lighting them from time to 
time. Around this central candle are many 
sockets to receive half-inch tapers. The last 
are bought from an attendant who has a desk 
near the entrance where he seems to dispense 
various ecclesiastical wares and file records. 
Procuring one or more of these candles, a wor- 
shiper advances to one of the candelabra, and 
lighting one, places it in position about the 
central candle. Before inserting, it is neces- 
sary to warm the lower end of each in the 
flame, and, this process being too hasty, occa- 
sionally the small tapers topple with some 
sound to the floor, but are replaced without 
apparent embarrassment. 

There is no furniture on the polished hard- 
wood floor except a few camp chairs on the west 



108 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

side, and a great square rug in the center. On 
this is a throne-like seat, reached by the chief 
of the ecclesiastics over a carpet laid to the en- 
trance. Thirty men wearing badges and hold- 
ing lighted candles, form a double line through 
which he passes to his place, in bearing and 
dress like some patriarch of old. The candle 
bearers now form a cordon about the rug with 
hundreds of men standing close up to them on 
the one side, and on the west stand hundreds of 
others, though fewer, of women. There are 
eight ecclesiastics wearing vestments, stiff with 
silver and gold. These vestments are changed 
from time to time, and there is much movement — 
bowing and prostrations, censors swung and 
tapers crossed — all to you in dream-like fashion 
as the sonorous chant continues through the 
hours. 

It may be noted that for a time the officiating 
priests performed the mysteries within the veil 
or screen. This is a light lattice work dividing 
the raised chancel from the body of the build- 
ing. Doors in the center of this were open part 
of the time and disclosed an altar which really 
had a surface on which offerings might be laid 
as in sacrifice. This was actually used to hold 
the great gold-bound book, the bell-like tiara, 
and vessels of ministration. 

Time however fails, and power as well to 
describe in intelligent terms what was done. It 



CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS 109 

is hard to follow even such an impressive spec- 
tacle standing through near four hours. 

But now the great official has passed out, 
with his robes sweeping behind him and a priest 
with a few assistants officiates at a marriage 
ceremony. The poor bride has been standing 
in the throng, leaning on the arm of the groom 
through the tedious hours of the preceding ser- 
vice. She is supported by four bridesmaids 
bearing beautiful bouquets, but, when the cere- 
mony actually begins, these remain with the 
other women who look on, while the young 
couple step upon the central rug before an 
altar placed for the occasion. 

Considerable time seems to be taken in enter- 
ing names, and a functionary reads from a 
manuscript record. Two rings are used and 
two gilt crowns. Two young friends of the 
bridegroom grasp these with napkins and hold 
them over the heads of the bride and groom, 
no easy task, especially when the priest led all 
in the procession three times round the altar. 
Fortunately the bride's train was not long, for 
as it was, her 'squire found it hard to keep from 
treading on it. 

Here again much seemed beyond comprehen- 
sion, in the ritual in this strange tongue; but 
since the world began such solemn service in 
which "twain become one flesh" never loses in- 
terest, whether celebrated with the solemn pomp 



110 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

of oriental rites or the simple service of the 
Friends. 



XXVIII 
A MORNING RIDE 

There was no rush of traffic or speeding of 
pleasure vehicles to interfere with observation 
on Fifth Avenue, but on the morning of June 
16th, 1904, death lured the wheel forward, with 
hardly a thought by the rider of the marble pal- 
ace that Clark, the Copper King, builds, and 
only a glance at the solid square house of Car- 
negie, walled with granite and fenced with steel. 

Further on is a Jewish congestion on side- 
walk and street; but speed may not be slack- 
ened, for the quest leads far forth from the 
crowded city, by green fields, over country 
roads. So the way passes round Mount Mor- 
ris Park and thence eastward to the great 
bridge over the Harlem. The black tide flows 
sullenly beneath, and above the sun looks down 
through a blue haze — another day a friendly 
haze to quench his too hot beams — to-day a 
pall over land and flood. 

Turning eastward again, a little beyond the 
bridge, others are seen, by wheel or on foot, 
passing toward the water-side fringed with 
men and women and children mutely gazing 
toward the islands South Brother and North. 
Surely the scene might draw the eyes of those 
who see beauty in broken coast lines and reefs 

111 



112 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

which cut the hissing surge like a knife. But 
to-day the cynosure is beneath the waves and 
between the islands green. A double line of 
men passes, blue-coated and in order, bearing 
grappling irons, and the sun looks down 
through the blue haze on the patient watchers, 
and the black tide laps sullenly bulkhead and 
reef and shore. 

The wheel moves out the dusty boulevard to 
Hunt's Point Road. Here are gardens of 
herbs, green meadows, and fields where the food 
of man grows, attractive to eyes ef the coun- 
try-born, hemmed in through hot June days by 
walls of brick, and shut off from contact with 
mother earth by pavements of black asphalt or 
granite gray. But rural sights and sounds 
stay him not, until the rocky shore is reached 
and eyes sweep westward to see the stem of a 
stranded steamer on North Brother's shore, 
burnt to the water's edge, while through the 
blue haze the sun looks down on the proud 
waves that bear this way and that gallant ship 
or tiniest pleasure boat, and fathoms deep, 
across the far channel's slimy ooze, lie the dead 
who yesterday laughed for very gladness of the 
blue sky above them and the sweep of the bright 
waters about them. 

The wheel turns to go as it came tilt at 97th 
Street the "Woodman's" Gate of Central Park 
is reached, through which it passes and down 



A MORNING RIDE 113 

the broad drive, over-arched on this side and 
that with maple and elm and linden tree. Spar- 
rows chirp in the branches, a squirrel finds his 
way just in front of the wheel with dainty steps 
across the damp road, and robins hop on the 
grass where green lawns line the roadway fur- 
ther on. 

To the left rise the walls of the Metropoli- 
tan Museum, and, in its lonely, solemn gran- 
deur, to the right stands the Obelisk, relic of a 
dead civilization, fit emblem to-day of the mute 
but mighty sorrow of that lower East-Side, 
where the sun looks down through the blue haze 
on half a thousand homes over which Hell 
Gate's horror flows like the black tide, where 
the mourning is like the mourning of Egypt 
when her first-born died. Christ save us all 
from a death like this where the tide flows fast 
by North Brother's shore. 



XXIX 

A PAUPER FUNERAL 

The March snow fell deep and dank over 
all the town, blinding the motorman and stall- 
ing the draught horse, while good women toiled 
through the streets to arrange for the burial 
of one who lay in the dead-house of the City 
Farm Colony on Staten Island. 

The result of their efforts was an appoint- 
ment for a few friends and a clergyman to 
meet at the ferry next day to take the noon 
boat. This appointment was kept, but in the 
meantime money enough had been gathered to 
rescue the body from burial in "the potter's 
field," and the company went their several 
ways, except one who crossed to Staten Island, 
and at the close of another strenuous day she 
had arranged that a Tompkinsville undertaker 
should convey the body from the City Farm to 
the cemetery, for burial next day. 

When the company met at the ferry on 
Wednesday, one friend failed to come, so leav- 
ing but a single mourner of the same kindred 
and country to look for the last time on the face 
of the sister, who in youth had come with her 
from bonny Scotland. There were, indeed, two 
children, but being, like their mother, depend- 
ent on charity, the daughter of thirteen in an 

114 



A PAUPER FUNERAL 115 

orphans' home, and the son of ten, who had 
lost a leg, in a cripples' hospital — the efforts 
of the women to have these also see their mother 
laid to rest were unavailing. 

At last the hour comes for the start, this 
third day, and the boat moved out of her slip 
upon the dancing waters of the harbor, bright 
in the sunlight. 

All sorts of craft are to be seen in the five 
miles that lie between the shores, from the 
humble bearers of the city's waste to dumping 
grounds beyond the harbor's limits, to the 
great ocean liners bearing through the Nar- 
rows, thousands of souls to some far world. 

In due time the boat makes the landing on 
the Staten Island shore, where trolley cars are 
taken. The track winds here and there till the 
streets of New Brighton are passed, and then, 
though the whole island is within the city 
limits, there is a succession of villages and ham- 
lets — some of ancient date, while others are the 
new-built homes of Manhattan's toilers, made 
possible by better transit facilities. Much of 
the way is through rural scenes of farm and 
forest, though on terraced slopes, or crowning 
the heights, glimpses appear of elegant villas 
or stately mansions. These wooded hills sug- 
gest familiar scenes in Western Pennsylvania, 
but soon the illusion is broken, as rapid move- 
ment brings to view on the left the blue waters 
of the lower bay. 



116 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

In an hour from the start on Manhattan, the 
journey ends at the gates of the beautiful 
Moravian cemetery at New Dorp. The snow 
lies heavy on the hillsides, but the gravel walks 
have been cleared, and the fresh earth of a new- 
made grave tells that all is ready. 

In the receiving vault the coffin is opened 
that identification may be sure, and then the 
bearers — cemetery laborers — place it on the 
bier, and the procession moves silently to the 
burial. There is no dirge sung nor floral trib- 
ute offered, but the sky is radiant above the 
dark grave, while close by the gentle fall of the 
stream sings of lapsing life. 

The coffin is lowered decently, the clergyman 
reads brief words of burial service, and the 

words of "committal" sound not unkindly 

"earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," 
— and after the prayer the sleeper is left to 
rest in peace, till the Lord Christ comes again 
to take home his own. 



XXX 

THE IRISH SHOEMAKER 

He came to America a hundred years ago. 
At that time on the Western Reserve, as in 
most of the land, indeed, the spinning wheel 
and loom were found in every home. 

The fields furnished flax and the flocks the 
fleece from which fair hands fashioned fabrics 
for use and for beauty. For the last, dyes 
were needed which the forest furnished, but 
alas, our shoemaker did not know a beech from 
a butternut. His wife, however, though "she 
was Irish too," soon learned so much lore of 
the land as to distinguish those trees which 
would yield the desired colors for chain or fill- 
ing, but she could not wield the woodman's axe 
to peel the precious bark. However, the couple 
were blessed with children, too young, indeed, 
for such-like service either of knowledge or 
strength, but they served very well as adjec- 
tives. 

So the mother took so many as she might 
need and placed a child at the foot of each tree 
whose bark she wished, and returning to the 
care of house and shop, sent the goodman forth 
to hew, for her dyeing, bark of the smooth 
young butternut or black-oak's scaly scarf. 
Perchance the cherry, too, for medicament, 

117 



118 ST. LUKE^S GARDEN 

yielded a homely spoil, or the sassafras its fra- 
grant root to cleanse the sluggish blood from 
winter's dregs. 

Now, in the language of Aesop : "This fable 
teaches," that knowledge is always a joy and 
sometimes power; but for want of the "ad- 
jectives" while all the trees of the forest are 
found even in the city's streets, and in its parks 
shrubs native or exotic, yet some sadly say 
that they do not know a sugar tree from a syca- 
more, and though "a rose by any other name 
would smell as sweet," yet eye or nostril would 
all the better appreciate shades of color or odor 
if the mind could put a name on this or that. 

The trees in most parks, indeed, may bear 
labels, but children, who might most profit by 
this fact, need to have attention called, and a 
real arbor day in a park with an expert teacher 
might make such adjectives of more worth than 
those of the Irish shoemaker. 

True there would be some expense ; but there 
would be fewer anarchists, in cities great or 
small, if children could learn the beauty of the 
world that God has made so fair and which 
men ought to make more free. Then too the 
forest might be more attractive than the beer 
garden, and those who knew the cedar as a fa- 
miliar friend in field or on hillside would grieve 
to see its green as garnishment for gin-mill 
doors. 



XXXI 

AN APPRECIATION 

" An embryo capital where fancy sees 
•Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees ; 
Where second-sighted seers the plain adorn 
With fanes unbuilt and heroes yet unborn, 
Though naught but woods and Jefferson they see ^ 
Where streets should run and sages ought to be. 

Tom Moore, 1804. 

Moore's flippant fling remained long too true, 
but now it may be said that the old reproach 
of the lack of the conveniences or necessities of 
municipal life is passed. Surely the inhabi- 
tants of many another city may envy the citi- 
zens of Washington, with her broad, level 
streets, asphalt paved, machine swept, bor- 
dered by shade trees, the fresh air space 
afforded by its parks and thoroughfares being 
proportionally greater than of any other city 

in the world. 

Not only in the city proper, but in the Fed- 
eral District and beyond it, fair suburban 
homes are built, but there is little of that 
raw freshness that so often marks the boom 
town. Indeed it should be said that Washing- 
ton is not so much as may be thought a city 
of the transient residence of official life, domes- 
tic or foreign. It has a permanent business life 
and citizenship comparable to that of other 

119 



120 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

American cities, while there are home-like sec- 
tions where dwell a humble folk in the quiet 
walks of life, and though the city is young in 
a way, now within its corporate limits is 
Georgetown, founded by Scotch immigrants in 
1695. 

Hard by too is old Bladensburgh with its 
memories of bitter defeat and the burning of 
public buildings in Washington by the vandal 
victors. It may be said also that while a great 
change in the atmosphere of the city as well 
as in its municipal appointments has taken 
place since the Civil War, even at the close of 
that conflict, Ohio's soldiers who had seen the 
noble Capitol, the vast Treasury and other 
massive buildings of the earlier architecture, re- 
ceived an impression that here by Potomac's 
wave, far from the Tiber another "eternal city" 
had been founded. 

More facile pens, indeed, may describe its 
buildings of beauty or of public interest in ac- 
curate detail; one of more mathematical mind 
may number its people, set down its boundaries, 
or tell of miles of streets or modern municipal 
equipment; but our present aim is rather to 
gain general impressions, to catch the air of 
this city set mid-way between the North and 
the South; and, so far as possible, convey to 
friends far off or near, who care to know, some 
knowledge of what manner of place it is which 
more and more is central in the nation's life. 



AN APPRECIATION 121 

Washington was planned by Major L'En- 
fant, one of the French patriots who came to 
the assistance of the colonies during the War 
of Independence. He died a disappointed old 
man, and was buried in the garden of Chellum 
Castle near Bladensburgh, eight miles from the 
capitol; but, as the Seer of Patmos saw the 
vision of the city that "lieth foursquare," so 
L'Enfant had a true prophetic foresight when 
he drew the streets running north and south 
and east and west on the rectangular plan, so 
common in modern cities ; but also made provi- 
sion for shortening the lines between distant 
points of the great city's site by the avenues. 
These avenues also serve to break the monotony 
of the "gridiron" plan, while to them are due 
the many circles and small squares character- 
istic of Washington. The intersections also 
afford sites for many statues of the illustrious 
sons of our own country or of foreign lands 
whom we delight to honor. 

Among the modifications of L'Enfant's plan 
to be regretted is the break in the course of 
Pennsylvania Avenue caused by the position of 
the Treasury. It is said that President Jack- 
son, impatient of the delay in choosing a site 
for this building, struck his cane into the 
ground saying "Build it here," and here it 
stands, its massive bulk cutting off the view 
from the Executive Mansion to the Capitol. So 



122 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

the brave array — thousands on thousands, sol- 
diers and civilians — that moved up the wide 
way in the bitter March weather to be reviewed 
by President Taft was broken at 15th Street as 
a great river's rush is turned swiftly aside by 
some mountain's shoulder thrust out at right 
angles to its course. 

It may be in place to say here that no ave- 
nue, strictly speaking, radiates from the Capi- 
tol. Pennsylvania and Maryland, New Jersey 
and Delaware do, indeed, focus travel there; 
but these are continued beyond the Capitol 
grounds and in pairs respectively form here on 
the map the figure of a St. Andrew's Cross, with 
the Capitol at the intersection, while North, 
East and South Capitol Streets meet at the 
same point, the Mall taking the place of West 
Capitol Street. 

Avenues in Washington, with slight excep- 
tion, bear the names of States of the Union. 
Some of them reach far out, to the District 
Line and beyond; while others are very short. 
Ohio Avenue, of the same width as Pennsyl- 
vania and parallel to it, extends only from 15th 
Street at the President's Park, to ISth Street. 
The enlargement of the Mall may, indeed, ob- 
literate Maine Avenue and Missouri from the 
map; but, nevertheless, citizens of thos'e states, 
alike with citizens of the new states that were 
no more than a dream when the original ave- 



AN APPRECIATION 123 

nues were named, will as often as may be, make 
their pilgrimage to the capital city, with no 
thought forevermore of "geographical center" 
or sectional relations, and find in these avenues 
and their names suggestion that they who gave 
the city such form builded better than many 
knew. 

Truly what is written here of square or cir- 
cle, street or avenue, is not for guidebook study, 
that you may find your way from White House 
to Capitol, but to assure all that the city is even 
now, and surely more and more will be, the 
worthy capital of a great nation. It may never 
be so in the sense in which it is said that "Paris 
is France," nor is it cosmopolitan like some 
larger cities of our own land. Washington has 
no Ghetto or Little Italy. True the children of 
Abraham are here as everywhere, and there 
has been too much crowding of colored citizens 
in the alleys ; but even they are not segregated 
in any African quarter, and no foreign accent 
is theirs. The city of course, is unique, in the 
land, as having within it embassies from all the 
nations; but the language of the place is not 
polyglot, and not only on Inauguration Day, 
but at all times, the appearance of people in 
streets or buildings is distinctively American. 
During long hours' waiting in the throng of 
thousands in front of the Capitol on the 4th 
of March, no voice was heard, save in our Eng- 



lU ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 

lish tongue, in admonition or protest, gibe or 
small talk; except for a moment only, the chat- 
ter of two Italians, and lonely enough looked 
the single silent Chinaman in the midst of the 
multitude, not a few of whom had come from 
far oceans' shores — from northern Lakeside or 
the Gulf's warmer coast. 

This appreciation may well close with the 
kindly words of Ambassador Bryce, spoken a 
score of years ago: — "Washington, which even 
so lately as the days of the war was a wilder- 
ness of mud and negroes, with a few big houses 
scattered here and there, has now become one 
of the handsomest capitals in the world, and 
cultivates the graces and pleasures of life with 
eminent success." 



W 98 




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